Robotic control system

ABSTRACT

In at least one embodiment, under the control of a robotic control system, a gripper on a robot is positioned to grasp a 3-dimensional object. In at least one embodiment, the relative position of the object and the gripper is determined, at least in part, by using a camera mounted on the gripper.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent ApplicationNo. 62/722,717, filed on Aug. 24, 2018, entitled “ASIMULATION-TO-REALITY APPROACH FOR SEMANTIC GRASPING OF REAL-WORLDOBJECTS,” the content of which is incorporated by reference herein inits entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

At least one embodiment pertains to processing resources used to controla robotic control system. For example, at least one embodiment pertainsto a trained network that produces a grasp pose for a robot.

BACKGROUND

Automation is an important area of technology. An important problemwithin the field of automation is the robotic manipulation of physicalobjects. In general, to manipulate a physical object, a robotic controlsystem determines the position and orientation of the robot relative tothe position and orientation of the object, and then positions the robotso that the object can be grasped by a mechanical hand or gripper. Ingeneral, objects have the ability to be grasped in a wide variety ofways. For example, a cup could be grasped across the width of the cup orby any point on the rim, or by a handle on the cup. Based on thecharacteristics of the object, grasps from a particular direction orgrasps on a particular part of an object can result in a more securegrip. Therefore, robotic control systems that are capable of executing awide variety of object grasp poses are needed so that preferred objectgrasp poses can be achieved.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates an example of an articulated robot, according to atleast one embodiment;

FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a robotic gripper, according to atleast one embodiment;

FIG. 3 illustrates an example of a machine-learning system that candirect a robot to perform a grasp of an object, according to at leastone embodiment;

FIG. 4 illustrates an example of a simulation used to train amachine-learning system to grasp an object, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 5 illustrates an example of a top-down grasp post, according to atleast one embodiment;

FIG. 6 illustrates an example of a side grasp pose, according to atleast one embodiment;

FIG. 7 illustrates an example of a process that, as a result of beingperformed by a machine-learning computer system, trains a neural networkto perform a grasp of an object, according to at least one embodiment;

FIG. 8 illustrates an example of a process that, as a result of beingperformed by a machine-learning computer system, performs a grasp of anobject using a trained neural network, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 9A illustrates inference and/or training logic, according to atleast one embodiment;

FIG. 9B illustrates inference and/or training logic, according to atleast one embodiment;

FIG. 10 illustrates training and deployment of a neural network,according to at least one embodiment;

FIG. 11 illustrates an example data center system, according to at leastone embodiment;

FIG. 12A illustrates an example of an autonomous vehicle, according toat least one embodiment;

FIG. 12B illustrates an example of camera locations and fields of viewfor the autonomous vehicle of FIG. 12A, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 12C is a block diagram illustrating an example system architecturefor the autonomous vehicle of FIG. 12A, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 12D is a diagram illustrating a system for communication betweencloud-based server(s) and the autonomous vehicle of FIG. 12A, accordingto at least one embodiment;

FIG. 13 is a block diagram illustrating a computer system, according toat least one embodiment;

FIG. 14 is a block diagram illustrating computer system, according to atleast one embodiment;

FIG. 15 illustrates a computer system, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 16 illustrates a computer system, according at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 17A illustrates a computer system, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 17B illustrates a computer system, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 17C illustrates a computer system, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 17D illustrates a computer system, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIGS. 17E-17F illustrate a shared programming model, according to atleast one embodiment;

FIG. 18 illustrates exemplary integrated circuits and associatedgraphics processors, according to at least one embodiment;

FIGS. 19A-19B illustrate exemplary integrated circuits and associatedgraphics processors, according to at least one embodiment;

FIGS. 20A-20B illustrate additional exemplary graphics processor logicaccording to at least one embodiment;

FIG. 21 illustrates a computer system, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 22A illustrates a parallel processor, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 22B illustrates a partition unit, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 22C illustrates a processing cluster, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 22D illustrates a graphics multiprocessor, according to at leastone embodiment;

FIG. 23 illustrates a multi-graphics processing unit (GPU) system,according to at least one embodiment;

FIG. 24 illustrates a graphics processor, according to at least oneembodiment;

FIG. 25 is a block diagram illustrating a processor micro-architecturefor a processor, according to at least one embodiment;

FIG. 26 illustrates a deep learning application processor, according toat least one embodiment;

FIG. 27 is a block diagram illustrating an example neuromorphicprocessor, according to at least one embodiment;

FIG. 28 illustrates at least portions of a graphics processor, accordingto one or more embodiments;

FIG. 29 illustrates at least portions of a graphics processor, accordingto one or more embodiments;

FIG. 30 illustrates at least portions of a graphics processor, accordingto one or more embodiments;

FIG. 31 is a block diagram of a graphics processing engine 3110 of agraphics processor in accordance with at least one embodiment.

FIG. 32 is a block diagram of at least portions of a graphics processorcore, according to at least one embodiment;

FIGS. 33A-33B illustrate thread execution logic 3300 including an arrayof processing elements of a graphics processor core according to atleast one embodiment

FIG. 34 illustrates a parallel processing unit (“PPU”), according to atleast one embodiment;

FIG. 35 illustrates a general processing cluster (“GPC”), according toat least one embodiment;

FIG. 36 illustrates a memory partition unit of a parallel processingunit (“PPU”), according to at least one embodiment; and

FIG. 37 illustrates a streaming multi-processor, according to at leastone embodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

In at least one embodiment, a system for controlling a robotic gripperis able to execute a particular grasp of a 3-dimensional object using anin-hand camera and a trained neural network. In general, many existingrobotic control systems are limited in that the particular grasps theyare able to achieve are restricted by the positioning of the camera usedto determine the position of the object and the robot. For example, manysystems are limited to top-down views of the object and the robot, andthis leads to a limited number of top-down grasp poses that the systemis capable of In at least one embodiment, the present system removesthis restriction, allowing far more possible grasp poses from the side,at an angle, or from the bottom of the object.

In at least one embodiment, the system employs a camera mounted on thewrist of a robot and oriented in the general direction of a gripper,claw, or mechanical hand. In at least one embodiment, due in part to thepositioning of the camera, the coordinate frame in which the problem issolved is in line with the main access of the grasping tool and has anorigin at the camera. In at least one embodiment, the system uses amachine learning system trained using deep reinforcement learning(“DRL”). In at least one embodiment, a double deep Q-network (“DDQN”)approach is used to learn a mapping from images and actions to estimatedQ-values. In at least one embodiment, a cross entropy method (“CEM”) isthen used to select the best action by iteratively sampling multipleQ-values.

In at least one embodiment, the images are acquired using awrist-mounted RGB camera, and the action space is along Cartesian axesaligned with the wrist. In at least one embodiment, the camera ismounted elsewhere, but the images are acquired from the wrist using aseries of mirrors or a waveguide. In at least one embodiment, the actionspace is along the primary access of a polar or spherical set ofcoordinates.

In at least one embodiment, techniques described herein utilize a deepreinforcement learning approach to grasp semantically meaningful objectsin a geometrically consistent way. In at least one embodiment, thesystem is trained in simulation, with sim-to-real transfer accomplishedby using a simulator that both models physical contact between the robotand the object to be grasped, and produces photorealistic imagery. In atleast one embodiment, the system provides an example of end-to-endsemantic grasping (mapping input pixels to output motor commands inCartesian or other coordinate systems). In at least one embodiment, byusing a camera positioned on the manipulator, the system is not limitedto top-down grasps and is capable of grasping objects from any angle. Inat least one embodiment, the system is able to grasp objects frommultiple pre-defined object-centric orientations, such as from the sideor top. When coupled with a real-time 6-DoF object pose estimator, atleast one embodiment is capable of grasping objects from any positionand orientation within the graspable workspace. In at least oneembodiment, results in both simulation and the real-world demonstratethe effectiveness of the approach.

As one skilled in the art will appreciate in light of this disclosure,certain embodiments may be capable of achieving certain advantages,including some or all of the following: (1) By leveraging DRL, thetechniques described herein are better able to leverage temporal effectsof actions; and (2) by formulating the problem with respect to acoordinate system centered around the wrist and gripper, variousembodiments are able to grasp objects from a wide variety oforientations.

FIG. 1 illustrates an example of an articulated robot, according to atleast one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, an articulated robot102 is controlled by a controller computer system that implements aneural network. In at least one embodiment, the controller computersystem includes one or more processors such as a general purposeprocessor or a graphical processing unit described below. In at leastone embodiment, the controller computer system includes a memory thatstores executable instructions that, as a result of being executed bythe one or more processors, cause the system to grasp an object. In atleast one embodiment, the controller computer system implements a neuralnetwork trained to generate control signals which cause the articulatedrobot 102 to grasp an object.

In the example illustrated in FIG. 1 , the articulated robot 102includes a first arm 104 and a second arm 106 connected to a base. In atleast one embodiment, the first arm 104 is connected to a wrist 114. Inat least one embodiment, a gripper 108 is mounted on the wrist 114. Inat least one embodiment, an object 110 is grasped by the gripper 108under the control of the controller computer system. In at least oneembodiment, a camera is mounted to the wrist 114, and the camera ismounted so that the view of the camera is directed along the axis of thegripper toward the object being grasped. In at least one embodiment, thesystem includes one or more additional cameras with a view of the workarea.

In at least one embodiment, the controller computer system obtains animage from a camera with a view of the work area, and determines a 6-dpose of the object 110 from the image. In at least one embodiment, the6-d pose is a xyz position and a rotational orientation of the object110. In at least one embodiment, the controller computer system selectsa grasp pose of the object 110 based on the 6-d pose of the object 110.In at least one embodiment, for example, the controller computer systemdetermines a particular way to grasp the object, based at least in parton the determined pose of the object. In at least one embodiment, thecontroller computer system determines a pre-grasp position to which thegripper is to be moved prior to attempting the grasp, and moves thegripper to the pre-grasp position prior to executing the grasp.

In at least one embodiment, after moving to the pre-grasp position, thecontroller computer system obtains images from the camera mounted to thewrist 114, and uses the images to refine the position of the gripper 108using a trained neural network. In at least one embodiment, the trainedneural network is provided with the images and a proposed action, andproduces a Q-value which is used to select an action most likely toproduce the desired grasp. In at least one embodiment, when the Q-valuereaches a threshold value, the gripper 108 is closed to grasp theobject. In at least one embodiment, the articulated robot and the objectare simulated to train the neural network.

FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a robotic gripper 202, according to atleast one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, the robotic gripper202 is attached to a gripper 204 via a wrist joint 206. In at least oneembodiment, the gripper 204 is a claw, articulated hand, vise, or othermanipulator for grasping or interacting with an object 208. In at leastone embodiment, a camera 210 is attached to the wrist joint 206. In atleast on embodiment, the camera 210 is directed in the direction of theaxis of the gripper and moves with the wrist joint 206 to maintainorientation with the gripper. In at least one embodiment, the cameraallows a controller computer system to adjust the position of thegripper 204 to increase the probability of a successful grasp.

In at least one embodiment, the objective of this work is to learn apolicy in simulation (left) that transfers to the real world (right) forgrasping a specific object in a specific manner.

In at least one embodiment, the techniques describe herein a system thatimproves robotic control by allowing for specific discriminate graspposes of an object. In some systems, a robot learns to grasp any ofseveral objects from a cluttered bin. In such approaches, it does notmatter which object is grasped, only that some object is grasped (or,for that matter, multiple objects). These methods tend to be restrictedto top-down grasping, in which the robot reaches down into a bin usingan overhead camera for sensing.

In at least one embodiment, a semantic grasp technique allows a robot tolearn to grasp a specific type of object—indicated by the user—from acluttered bin. Although such approaches address the question of whichobject to grasp, they generally do not address the question of how tograsp the objects, for example, by selecting the part of the object anddirection of the grasp. Moreover, some examples of these methods may belimited to top-down grasping using overhead sensing.

For many real-world tasks, the manner in which the object is grasped isimportant. A robot that grasps a mug upside down has not necessarilymade a successful grasp for the intended task, nor has a robot thatgrabs a fork by the tines, for example. To address such problems, thetechniques described herein are, in various embodiments, able to graspobjects in a specific manner, from a specific direction. Moreover, thetypes of grasps that are appropriate depend upon the type of object. Asa result, the present document describes a system that is capable ofgrasping a specific type of object in a specific way.

In at least one embodiment, to enable grasping objects from anydirection (not just top-down), our approach uses a camera-in-hand. In atleast one embodiment, a deep reinforcement learning (“DRL”) method isused to train a neural network in an end-to-end fashion using onlysynthetic data. In at least one embodiment, domain transfer fromsynthetic-to-real is accomplished by using data from a simulator thatmodels physical contact and generates photorealistic images fortraining. In at least one embodiment, experiments with a Baxter robotshow the ability of the learned policies to enable grasping of specificobjects in specific ways. In at least one embodiment, various techniquesdescribed herein provide an approach to geometry-aware semantic graspingthat learns to grasp specific objects along specific grasp directions, amethod to generate physically plausible, photorealistic synthetic datato train policies that transfer to the real world without a specialdomain adaptation step, and a system that combines the learnedcamera-in-hand policies for local control with global 6-DoF poseestimation from a fixed camera in order to grasp objects anywhere in thegraspable workspace.

In at least one embodiment, techniques described herein use areinforcement learning approach, and the problem is modeled as a Markovdecision process (“MDP”) represented as a tuple (S, O, A, P, r, γ),where S is the set of states in the environment, O is the set ofobservations, A is the set of actions, P: S×A×S→

is the state transition probability function, r: S×A→

is the reward function, and γ is a discount factor.

In at least one embodiment, the goal of training is to learn adeterministic policy π: O→A such that taking action a_(t)=π(o_(t)) attime t maximizes the sum of discounted future rewards from state s_(t):

$R_{t} = {\sum{\frac{\propto}{i = t}\gamma^{i - t}{{r\left( {s_{i},a_{i}} \right)}.}}}$In at least one embodiment, after taking action a_(t), the environmenttransitions from state s_(t) to state s_(t+1) by sampling from P. In atleast one embodiment, the quality of taking action at in state s_(t) ismeasured by Q(s_(t), a_(t))=

[R_(t)|s_(t), a_(t)], known as the Q-function.

In at least one embodiment, for learning, the techniques describedherein utilize a double deep Q-network (“DDQN”), which is an off-policy,model-free RL algorithm. In at least one embodiment, DDQN overcomes thelimitations of DQN (such as over-estimation of action values) by usingseparate networks for action selection and action evaluation, copyingthe weights from one to the other periodically. In at least oneembodiment, the learned policy maps 50×50 images downsampled from theeye-in-hand camera mounted on the wrist of the robot to a continuous 4Dvalue representing an action in an end-effector-centric Cartesiancoordinate system (that is, 3 translation values and 1 rotation aroundthe wrist axis). In at least one embodiment, since the network mapsinput images and actions to values, the cross-entropy method (“CEM”) isused to select the best action.

FIG. 3 illustrates an example of a machine-learning system that candirect a robot to perform a grasp of an object, according to at leastone embodiment. In at least one embodiment, an image 302 from agripper-oriented (wrist mounted for example) camera is embedded by adeep neural network 304. In at least one embodiment, the embedding 306is then fed, along with the action 308, to first network 310 to estimatethe Q-value. In at least one embodiment, the embedding 306 is providedto a second network 314 to produce a set of auxiliary losses 316. In atleast one embodiment, the set of auxiliary losses 316 includes anindication of contact with the object, and/or an indication ofinterference with a work surface or other object. In at least oneembodiment, both the Q-value loss 312 and set of auxiliary losses 316are used during training.

FIG. 4 illustrates an example of a simulation used to train amachine-learning system to grasp an object, according to at least oneembodiment. In at least one embodiment, training time is reduced byrunning multiple simulated robots in parallel. In at least oneembodiment, a variety of environmental conditions is used to improve thetraining of the machine-learning system. In at least one embodiment,various textures and/or patterns are used on a work surface. In at leastone embodiment, a first instance of the simulation uses a first worksurface pattern 402, a second instance of the simulation uses a secondwork surface pattern 404, a third instance of the simulation uses athird work surface pattern 406, and a fourth instance of the simulationuses a forth work surface pattern 408. In at least one embodiment, thetechniques described herein utilize domain randomization to make thenetwork robust to changes in the visual input.

FIG. 5 illustrates an example of a top-down grasp post, according to atleast one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, a robot 502 is showngrasping an object 504. In at least one embodiment, the environmentsurrounding the object 504 includes a variety of other objects such as asoda can 506 and a pen 508. In at least one embodiment, a camera ismounted on the wrist of the robot 502 and the camera is directed alongthe axis of a gripper 510. In at least one embodiment, the cameraprovides images of an object to be grasped to a controller computersystem. In at least one embodiment, the controller computer systemimplements one or more neural networks trained to identify actions that,as a result of being performed by the robot 502, position the robot togrip the object 504 in a particular way. In at least one embodiment, thecamera captures an image 512 that includes the object 514 from the pointof view of the gripper, allowing the control system to make fineadjustments that improve the precision and accuracy of the resultinggrasp.

FIG. 6 illustrates an example of a side grasp pose, according to atleast one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, a robot 602 uses agripper 604 to grasp an object 608. In at least one embodiment, a camera606 mounted on the wrist of the robot 602 is directed in line with thegripper 604. In at least one embodiment, by placing the camera 606 onthe wrist of the robot, the robot 602 is able to perform grasps fromvarious directions such as from the side as illustrated in FIG. 6 . Inat least one embodiment, the camera 606 captures an image 610 thatincludes an image of the object 612 from the perspective of the gripper.

In at least one embodiment, after training in simulation, a policyproduced by the training is able to grasp the intended object in thereal world without fine-tuning. In at least one embodiment, the actionspace is gripper-centric, allowing the robot to perform not onlytop-down grasps (as illustrated in FIG. 5 ) but also of grasps fromother orientations (as illustrated in FIG. 6 ).

FIG. 7 illustrates an example of a process that, as a result of beingperformed by a machine-learning computer system, trains a neural networkto perform a grasp of an object, according to at least one embodiment.In at least one embodiment, the grasp is performed by an articulatedrobot having one or more movable joints whose positions can be adjustedunder the control of a robotic control system. In at least oneembodiment, the robotic control system is a computer system comprisingone or more processors and memory storing executable instructions that,as a result of being executed by the one or more processors, cause therobot to move under programmatic control. In at least one embodiment,the grasp is performed by a claw that can open or close under control ofthe robotic control system. In at least one embodiment, the grasp isperformed by a mechanical hand having two or more digits. In at leastone embodiment, the grasp is performed by a spot welding tip or othertool.

In at least one embodiment, the process begins at block 702 with thecomputer system generating a plurality of simulations. In at least oneembodiment, the simulations correspond to a physical system to becontrolled. In at least one embodiment, for example, a manipulator inthe simulation matches a manipulator on a corresponding robot to becontrolled. In at least one embodiment, the simulations are simulationsof an articulated robot and an object to be grasped by the robot. In atleast one embodiment, each simulation includes various textures,objects, and patterns that may block, obscure, or clutter the imagecollected by a virtual camera located on the wrist of the articulatedrobot. In at least one embodiment, a work surface may vary in colorbetween individual instances of the simulation. In at least oneembodiment, additional objects other than the object to be grasped maybe added to the work surface of various simulation instances. In atleast one embodiment, lighting conditions are varied so that generatedimages have different qualities. In at least one embodiment, at block704, the simulation generates images for each simulation that are usedto train the machine-learning system. In at least one embodiment, theimages are generated from the point of view of the simulated virtualcamera mounted on the rest of the articulated robot and oriented in thedirection of the robotic gripper used to grasp the object. In at leastone embodiment, the images are produced with a camera model that matchesa physical camera on the robot to be controlled.

In at least one embodiment, at block 706, each image is run through anetwork to generate an embedding of the image. In at least oneembodiment, the embedding is provided to an additional network, and theadditional network is also provided with a proposed action to generate aQ-value loss. In at least one embodiment, at block 708, the embeddingmay be provided to an additional network that generates a set ofauxiliary losses used to train the machine-learning system. In at leastone embodiment, at block 710, the Q-value losses and auxiliary lossesare used to train a network capable of controlling the grasp of therobot. In at least one embodiment, Q-learning is employed to train thenetwork.

FIG. 8 illustrates an example of a process 800 that, as a result ofbeing performed by a trained machine-learning computer system, performsa grasp of an object using a trained neural network, according to atleast one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, the machine-learningcomputer system is trained using the process illustrated in FIG. 7 . Inat least one embodiment, the process 800 is used to control anarticulated robot that includes a manipulator such as a claw, hand, ortool. In at least one embodiment, at block 802, the machine-learningcomputer system identifies an object to be grasped by the robot. In atleast one embodiment, the object is identified using an image capturedby a camera. In at least one embodiment, the camera is an overheadcamera. In at least one embodiment, the camera is in-hand camera, andthe manipulator is directed in the general direction of the object to begrasped. In at least one embodiment, the object is identified from a setof known objects. In at least one embodiment, the object is identifiedas a symmetric, asymmetric, or semi-symmetric object. In at least oneembodiment, at block 804, based at least in part on the identity of theobject, the machine-learning computer system identifies a particulargrasp pose with which to grasp the object. In at least one embodiment,for example, the system may determine to grasp a cup by a handle ratherthan by the rim. In at least one embodiment, a particular grasp pose isselected based on an orientation of the object on a work surface. In atleast one embodiment, a particular grasp pose is selected based on thepresence of other objects around the object to be grasped.

In at least one embodiment, at block 806, the machine-learning computersystem determines a 6D-pose of the object. In at least one embodiment,the 6D-pose may be determined from an image captured from an in-handcamera or by another camera with a view of the work area. In at leastone embodiment, the 6D-pose includes a three-axis translation andthree-axis rotation for the object. In at least one embodiment, at block808, the machine-learning computer system determines a pre-grasp posefrom the 6D-pose and selected grasp pose desired. In at least oneembodiment, the pre-grasp pose is a 6D-pose of the robotic gripperpositioned slightly away from the desired grasp pose so that an in-handcamera mounted on the robot has a proper view of the object to begrasped. In at least one embodiment, after determining the pre-grasppose, the machine-learning computer system directs the robot to move thegripper to the determined pre-grasp pose position. In at least oneembodiment, the pre-grasp pose matches a pre-grasp pose performed in asimulation used to train the machine-learning computer system.

In at least one embodiment, at block 810, the machine-learning computersystem obtains an image from a camera mounted on the wrist of the robotand oriented in the direction of the robotic gripper (an in-handcamera). In at least one embodiment, at block 812, the image isprocessed using a trained network, and a proposed action is alsoprovided to train the network to produce a Q-score. In at least oneembodiment, based at least in part on the Q-score, the machine-learningcomputer system determines a particular action that will improve theposition of the robotic gripper with respect to producing a successfulgrasp. In at least one embodiment, a variety of actions are tested usingthe tray network to determine an action that will maximize the Q-score,and the corresponding action is selected to be performed by the robot.In at least one embodiment, at block 814, the machine-learning computersystem directs the robot to perform the determined action. In at leastone embodiment, the action is movement of one or more joints of anarticulated robot. In at least one embodiment, the action is rotation ofone or more joints of an articulated robot. In at least one embodiment,the set of possible actions includes combinations of movements orrotations.

In at least one embodiment, at decision block 816, the machine-learningcomputer system determines whether the positioning of the roboticgripper is complete. In at least one embodiment, positioning of therobotic gripper is complete when the Q-score exceeds a threshold value.In at least one embodiment, if positioning is not complete, executionreturns to block 810 where a new image is acquired from the new robotposition. In at least one embodiment, if positioning is complete,execution advances to block 818 and the machine-learning computer systemdirects the robot to grasp the object. In at least one embodiment, themachine-learning computer system may evaluate the success or failure ofthe grasp using force and/or position sensors on the gripper. In atleast one embodiment, success or failure of the grasp is determinedusing the in-hand camera. In at least one embodiment, success or failureof the grasp is determined based on a Q-score calculated afterarticulating the robotic gripper. In at least one embodiment, if thegrasp is determined to be a failure, the robot is repositioned to thepre-grasp position, and an additional attempt to grasp the object isperformed.

In at least one embodiment, one or more processors are used to implementa machine-learning system. In at least one embodiment, the one or moreprocessors can be a general-purpose CPU, GPU, programmable gate array,combinational logic, or processing device as described below. In atleast one embodiment, the system described above can be adapted to othercontrol systems in which an object is manipulated or grasped. In atleast one embodiment, for example the system above can be adapted tocontrol an autonomous vehicle were images are acquired from afirst-person camera, and process to position the vehicle in a particularway. In at least one embodiment, the system above can be adapted to parkan autonomous vehicle, accurately position an electric vehicle forcharging, pick up a pallet with a forklift. In at least one embodiment,techniques described above can be adapted to operate a pick and placerobot used for electronics assembly. In at least on embodiment, a clawis mounted on a garbage truck, and the claw, and optionally, the truckitself are controlled using the techniques described herein to grasp,lift, and deposit the contents of a trash contained into the garbagetruck.

Inference and Training Logic

FIG. 9A illustrates inference and/or training logic 915 used to performinferencing and/or training operations associated with one or moreembodiments. Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 areprovided below in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B.

In at least one embodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 mayinclude, without limitation, code and/or data storage 901 to storeforward and/or output weight and/or input/output data, and/or otherparameters to configure neurons or layers of a neural network trainedand/or used for inferencing in aspects of one or more embodiments. In atleast one embodiment, training logic 915 may include, or be coupled tocode and/or data storage 901 to store graph code or other software tocontrol timing and/or order, in which weight and/or other parameterinformation is to be loaded to configure, logic, including integerand/or floating point units (collectively, arithmetic logic units(ALUs). In at least one embodiment, code, such as graph code, loadsweight or other parameter information into processor ALUs based on anarchitecture of a neural network to which the code corresponds. In atleast one embodiment code and/or data storage 901 stores weightparameters and/or input/output data of each layer of a neural networktrained or used in conjunction with one or more embodiments duringforward propagation of input/output data and/or weight parameters duringtraining and/or inferencing using aspects of one or more embodiments. Inat least one embodiment, any portion of code and/or data storage 901 maybe included with other on-chip or off-chip data storage, including aprocessor's L1, L2, or L3 cache or system memory.

In at least one embodiment, any portion of code and/or data storage 901may be internal or external to one or more processors or other hardwarelogic devices or circuits. In at least one embodiment, code and/or codeand/or data storage 901 may be cache memory, dynamic randomlyaddressable memory (“DRAM”), static randomly addressable memory(“SRAM”), non-volatile memory (e.g., Flash memory), or other storage. Inat least one embodiment, choice of whether code and/or code and/or datastorage 901 is internal or external to a processor, for example, orcomprised of DRAM, SRAM, Flash or some other storage type may depend onavailable storage on-chip versus off-chip, latency requirements oftraining and/or inferencing functions being performed, batch size ofdata used in inferencing and/or training of a neural network, or somecombination of these factors.

In at least one embodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 mayinclude, without limitation, a code and/or data storage 905 to storebackward and/or output weight and/or input/output data corresponding toneurons or layers of a neural network trained and/or used forinferencing in aspects of one or more embodiments. In at least oneembodiment, code and/or data storage 905 stores weight parameters and/orinput/output data of each layer of a neural network trained or used inconjunction with one or more embodiments during backward propagation ofinput/output data and/or weight parameters during training and/orinferencing using aspects of one or more embodiments. In at least oneembodiment, training logic 915 may include, or be coupled to code and/ordata storage 905 to store graph code or other software to control timingand/or order, in which weight and/or other parameter information is tobe loaded to configure, logic, including integer and/or floating pointunits (collectively, arithmetic logic units (ALUs). In at least oneembodiment, code, such as graph code, loads weight or other parameterinformation into processor ALUs based on an architecture of a neuralnetwork to which the code corresponds. In at least one embodiment, anyportion of code and/or data storage 905 may be included with otheron-chip or off-chip data storage, including a processor's L1, L2, or L3cache or system memory. In at least one embodiment, any portion of codeand/or data storage 905 may be internal or external to on one or moreprocessors or other hardware logic devices or circuits. In at least oneembodiment, code and/or data storage 905 may be cache memory, DRAM,SRAM, non-volatile memory (e.g., Flash memory), or other storage. In atleast one embodiment, choice of whether code and/or data storage 905 isinternal or external to a processor, for example, or comprised of DRAM,SRAM, Flash or some other storage type may depend on available storageon-chip versus off-chip, latency requirements of training and/orinferencing functions being performed, batch size of data used ininferencing and/or training of a neural network, or some combination ofthese factors.

In at least one embodiment, code and/or data storage 901 and code and/ordata storage 905 may be separate storage structures. In at least oneembodiment, code and/or data storage 901 and code and/or data storage905 may be same storage structure. In at least one embodiment, codeand/or data storage 901 and code and/or data storage 905 may bepartially same storage structure and partially separate storagestructures. In at least one embodiment, any portion of code and/or datastorage 901 and code and/or data storage 905 may be included with otheron-chip or off-chip data storage, including a processor's L1, L2, or L3cache or system memory.

In at least one embodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 mayinclude, without limitation, one or more arithmetic logic unit(s)(“ALU(s)”) 910, including integer and/or floating point units, toperform logical and/or mathematical operations based, at least in parton, or indicated by, training and/or inference code (e.g., graph code),a result of which may produce activations (e.g., output values fromlayers or neurons within a neural network) stored in an activationstorage 920 that are functions of input/output and/or weight parameterdata stored in code and/or data storage 901 and/or code and/or datastorage 905. In at least one embodiment, activations stored inactivation storage 920 are generated according to linear algebraic andor matrix-based mathematics performed by ALU(s) 910 in response toperforming instructions or other code, wherein weight values stored incode and/or data storage 905 and/or data 901 are used as operands alongwith other values, such as bias values, gradient information, momentumvalues, or other parameters or hyperparameters, any or all of which maybe stored in code and/or data storage 905 or code and/or data storage901 or another storage on or off-chip.

In at least one embodiment, ALU(s) 910 are included within one or moreprocessors or other hardware logic devices or circuits, whereas inanother embodiment, ALU(s) 910 may be external to a processor or otherhardware logic device or circuit that uses them (e.g., a co-processor).In at least one embodiment, ALUs 910 may be included within aprocessor's execution units or otherwise within a bank of ALUsaccessible by a processor's execution units either within same processoror distributed between different processors of different types (e.g.,central processing units, graphics processing units, fixed functionunits, etc.). In at least one embodiment, data storage 901, code and/ordata storage 905, and activation storage 920 may be on same processor orother hardware logic device or circuit, whereas in another embodiment,they may be in different processors or other hardware logic devices orcircuits, or some combination of same and different processors or otherhardware logic devices or circuits. In at least one embodiment, anyportion of activation storage 920 may be included with other on-chip oroff-chip data storage, including a processor's L1, L2, or L3 cache orsystem memory. Furthermore, inferencing and/or training code may bestored with other code accessible to a processor or other hardware logicor circuit and fetched and/or processed using a processor's fetch,decode, scheduling, execution, retirement and/or other logical circuits.

In at least one embodiment, activation storage 920 may be cache memory,DRAM, SRAM, non-volatile memory (e.g., Flash memory), or other storage.In at least one embodiment, activation storage 920 may be completely orpartially within or external to one or more processors or other logicalcircuits. In at least one embodiment, choice of whether activationstorage 920 is internal or external to a processor, for example, orcomprised of DRAM, SRAM, Flash or some other storage type may depend onavailable storage on-chip versus off-chip, latency requirements oftraining and/or inferencing functions being performed, batch size ofdata used in inferencing and/or training of a neural network, or somecombination of these factors. In at least one embodiment, inferenceand/or training logic 915 illustrated in FIG. 9A may be used inconjunction with an application-specific integrated circuit (“ASIC”),such as Tensorflow® Processing Unit from Google, an inference processingunit (IPU) from Graphcore™, or a Nervana® (e.g., “Lake Crest”) processorfrom Intel Corp. In at least one embodiment, inference and/or traininglogic 915 illustrated in FIG. 9A may be used in conjunction with centralprocessing unit (“CPU”) hardware, graphics processing unit (“GPU”)hardware or other hardware, such as field programmable gate arrays(“FPGAs”).

FIG. 9B illustrates inference and/or training logic 915, according to atleast one embodiment various. In at least one embodiment, inferenceand/or training logic 915 may include, without limitation, hardwarelogic in which computational resources are dedicated or otherwiseexclusively used in conjunction with weight values or other informationcorresponding to one or more layers of neurons within a neural network.In at least one embodiment, inference and/or training logic 915illustrated in FIG. 9B may be used in conjunction with anapplication-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), such as Tensorflow®Processing Unit from Google, an inference processing unit (IPU) fromGraphcore™, or a Nervana® (e.g., “Lake Crest”) processor from IntelCorp. In at least one embodiment, inference and/or training logic 915illustrated in FIG. 9B may be used in conjunction with centralprocessing unit (CPU) hardware, graphics processing unit (GPU) hardwareor other hardware, such as field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). In atleast one embodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 includes,without limitation, code and/or data storage 901 and code and/or datastorage 905, which may be used to store code (e.g., graph code), weightvalues and/or other information, including bias values, gradientinformation, momentum values, and/or other parameter or hyperparameterinformation. In at least one embodiment illustrated in FIG. 9B, each ofcode and/or data storage 901 and code and/or data storage 905 isassociated with a dedicated computational resource, such ascomputational hardware 902 and computational hardware 906, respectively.In at least one embodiment, each of computational hardware 902 andcomputational hardware 906 comprises one or more ALUs that performmathematical functions, such as linear algebraic functions, only oninformation stored in code and/or data storage 901 and code and/or datastorage 905, respectively, result of which is stored in activationstorage 920.

In at least one embodiment, each of code and/or data storage 901 and 905and corresponding computational hardware 902 and 906, respectively,correspond to different layers of a neural network, such that resultingactivation from one “storage/computational pair 901/902” of code and/ordata storage 901 and computational hardware 902 is provided as an inputto next “storage/computational pair 905/906” of code and/or data storage905 and computational hardware 906, in order to mirror conceptualorganization of a neural network. In at least one embodiment, each ofstorage/computational pairs 901/902 and 905/906 may correspond to morethan one neural network layer. In at least one embodiment, additionalstorage/computation pairs (not shown) subsequent to or in parallel withstorage computation pairs 901/902 and 905/906 may be included ininference and/or training logic 915.

Neural Network Training and Deployment

FIG. 10 illustrates training and deployment of a deep neural network,according to at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment,untrained neural network 91006 is trained using a training dataset 1002.In at least one embodiment, training framework 1004 is a PyTorchframework, whereas in other embodiments, training framework 1004 is aTensorflow, Boost, Caffe, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit/CNTK, MXNet,Chainer, Keras, Deeplearning4j, or other training framework. In at leastone embodiment training framework 1004 trains an untrained neuralnetwork 1006 and enables it to be trained using processing resourcesdescribed herein to generate a trained neural network 1008. In at leastone embodiment, weights may be chosen randomly or by pre-training usinga deep belief network. In at least one embodiment, training may beperformed in either a supervised, partially supervised, or unsupervisedmanner.

In at least one embodiment, untrained neural network 1006 is trainedusing supervised learning, wherein training dataset 1002 includes aninput paired with a desired output for an input, or where trainingdataset 1002 includes input having a known output and an output ofneural network 1006 is manually graded. In at least one embodiment,untrained neural network 1006 is trained in a supervised mannerprocesses inputs from training dataset 1002 and compares resultingoutputs against a set of expected or desired outputs. In at least oneembodiment, errors are then propagated back through untrained neuralnetwork 1006. In at least one embodiment, training framework 1004adjusts weights that control untrained neural network 1006. In at leastone embodiment, training framework 1004 includes tools to monitor howwell untrained neural network 1006 is converging towards a model, suchas trained neural network 1008, suitable to generating correct answers,such as in result 1014, based on known input data, such as new data1012. In at least one embodiment, training framework 1004 trainsuntrained neural network 1006 repeatedly while adjust weights to refinean output of untrained neural network 1006 using a loss function andadjustment algorithm, such as stochastic gradient descent. In at leastone embodiment, training framework 1004 trains untrained neural network1006 until untrained neural network 1006 achieves a desired accuracy. Inat least one embodiment, trained neural network 1008 can then bedeployed to implement any number of machine learning operations.

In at least one embodiment, untrained neural network 1006 is trainedusing unsupervised learning, wherein untrained neural network 1006attempts to train itself using unlabeled data. In at least oneembodiment, unsupervised learning training dataset 1002 will includeinput data without any associated output data or “ground truth” data. Inat least one embodiment, untrained neural network 1006 can learngroupings within training dataset 1002 and can determine how individualinputs are related to untrained dataset 1002. In at least oneembodiment, unsupervised training can be used to generate aself-organizing map, which is a type of trained neural network 1008capable of performing operations useful in reducing dimensionality ofnew data 1012. In at least one embodiment, unsupervised training canalso be used to perform anomaly detection, which allows identificationof data points in a new dataset 1012 that deviate from normal patternsof new dataset 1012.

In at least one embodiment, semi-supervised learning may be used, whichis a technique in which in training dataset 1002 includes a mix oflabeled and unlabeled data. In at least one embodiment, trainingframework 1004 may be used to perform incremental learning, such asthrough transferred learning techniques. In at least one embodiment,incremental learning enables trained neural network 1008 to adapt to newdata 1012 without forgetting knowledge instilled within network duringinitial training.

Data Center

FIG. 11 illustrates an example data center 1100, in which at least oneembodiment may be used. In at least one embodiment, data center 1100includes a data center infrastructure layer 1110, a framework layer1120, a software layer 1130 and an application layer 1140.

In at least one embodiment, as shown in FIG. 11 , data centerinfrastructure layer 1110 may include a resource orchestrator 1112,grouped computing resources 1114, and node computing resources (“nodeC.R.s”) 1116(1)-1116(N), where “N” represents any whole, positiveinteger. In at least one embodiment, node C.R.s 1116(1)-1116(N) mayinclude, but are not limited to, any number of central processing units(“CPUs”) or other processors (including accelerators, field programmablegate arrays (FPGAs), graphics processors, etc.), memory devices (e.g.,dynamic read-only memory), storage devices (e.g., solid state or diskdrives), network input/output (“NW I/O”) devices, network switches,virtual machines (“VMs”), power modules, and cooling modules, etc. In atleast one embodiment, one or more node C.R.s from among node C.R.s1116(1)-1116(N) may be a server having one or more of above-mentionedcomputing resources.

In at least one embodiment, grouped computing resources 1114 may includeseparate groupings of node C.R.s housed within one or more racks (notshown), or many racks housed in data centers at various geographicallocations (also not shown). Separate groupings of node C.R.s withingrouped computing resources 1114 may include grouped compute, network,memory or storage resources that may be configured or allocated tosupport one or more workloads. In at least one embodiment, several nodeC.R.s including CPUs or processors may grouped within one or more racksto provide compute resources to support one or more workloads. In atleast one embodiment, one or more racks may also include any number ofpower modules, cooling modules, and network switches, in anycombination.

In at least one embodiment, resource orchestrator 1112 may configure orotherwise control one or more node C.R.s 1116(1)-1116(N) and/or groupedcomputing resources 1114. In at least one embodiment, resourceorchestrator 1112 may include a software design infrastructure (“SDI”)management entity for data center 1100. In at least one embodiment,resource orchestrator may include hardware, software or some combinationthereof.

In at least one embodiment, as shown in FIG. 11 , framework layer 1120includes a job scheduler 1132, a configuration manager 1134, a resourcemanager 1136 and a distributed file system 1138. In at least oneembodiment, framework layer 1120 may include a framework to supportsoftware 1132 of software layer 1130 and/or one or more application(s)1142 of application layer 1140. In at least one embodiment, software1132 or application(s) 1142 may respectively include web-based servicesoftware or applications, such as those provided by Amazon Web Services,Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. In at least one embodiment, frameworklayer 1120 may be, but is not limited to, a type of free and open-sourcesoftware web application framework such as Apache Spark™ (hereinafter“Spark”) that may utilize distributed file system 1138 for large-scaledata processing (e.g., “big data”). In at least one embodiment, jobscheduler 1132 may include a Spark driver to facilitate scheduling ofworkloads supported by various layers of data center 1100. In at leastone embodiment, configuration manager 1134 may be capable of configuringdifferent layers such as software layer 1130 and framework layer 1120including Spark and distributed file system 1138 for supportinglarge-scale data processing. In at least one embodiment, resourcemanager 1136 may be capable of managing clustered or grouped computingresources mapped to or allocated for support of distributed file system1138 and job scheduler 1132. In at least one embodiment, clustered orgrouped computing resources may include grouped computing resource 1114at data center infrastructure layer 1110. In at least one embodiment,resource manager 1136 may coordinate with resource orchestrator 1112 tomanage these mapped or allocated computing resources.

In at least one embodiment, software 1132 included in software layer1130 may include software used by at least portions of node C.R.s1116(1)-1116(N), grouped computing resources 1114, and/or distributedfile system 1138 of framework layer 1120. One or more types of softwaremay include, but are not limited to, Internet web page search software,e-mail virus scan software, database software, and streaming videocontent software.

In at least one embodiment, application(s) 1142 included in applicationlayer 1140 may include one or more types of applications used by atleast portions of node C.R.s 1116(1)-1116(N), grouped computingresources 1114, and/or distributed file system 1138 of framework layer1120. One or more types of applications may include, but are not limitedto, any number of a genomics application, a cognitive compute, and amachine learning application, including training or inferencingsoftware, machine learning framework software (e.g., PyTorch,TensorFlow, Caffe, etc.) or other machine learning applications used inconjunction with one or more embodiments.

In at least one embodiment, any of configuration manager 1134, resourcemanager 1136, and resource orchestrator 1112 may implement any numberand type of self-modifying actions based on any amount and type of dataacquired in any technically feasible fashion. In at least oneembodiment, self-modifying actions may relieve a data center operator ofdata center 1100 from making possibly bad configuration decisions andpossibly avoiding underutilized and/or poor performing portions of adata center.

In at least one embodiment, data center 1100 may include tools,services, software or other resources to train one or more machinelearning models or predict or infer information using one or moremachine learning models according to one or more embodiments describedherein. For example, in at least one embodiment, a machine learningmodel may be trained by calculating weight parameters according to aneural network architecture using software and computing resourcesdescribed above with respect to data center 1100. In at least oneembodiment, trained machine learning models corresponding to one or moreneural networks may be used to infer or predict information usingresources described above with respect to data center 1100 by usingweight parameters calculated through one or more training techniquesdescribed herein.

In at least one embodiment, data center may use CPUs,application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), GPUs, FPGAs, or otherhardware to perform training and/or inferencing using above-describedresources. Moreover, one or more software and/or hardware resourcesdescribed above may be configured as a service to allow users to trainor performing inferencing of information, such as image recognition,speech recognition, or other artificial intelligence services.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in systemFIG. 11 for inferencing or predicting operations based, at least inpart, on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

In at least one embodiment, the machine-learning system described abovemay be used to control a robot to perform a grasp of an object. In atleast one embodiment, images retrieved from an in-hand camera areprovided to the above machine-learning system, and the machine-learningsystem identifies an action that will position the robot for asuccessful grasp pose.

Autonomous Vehicle

FIG. 12A illustrates an example of an autonomous vehicle 1200, accordingto at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, autonomousvehicle 1200 (alternatively referred to herein as “vehicle 1200”) maybe, without limitation, a passenger vehicle, such as a car, a truck, abus, and/or another type of vehicle that accommodates one or morepassengers. In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may be asemi-tractor-trailer truck used for hauling cargo. In at least oneembodiment, vehicle 1200 may be an airplane, robotic vehicle, or otherkind of vehicle.

Autonomous vehicles may be described in terms of automation levels,defined by National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”), adivision of US Department of Transportation, and Society of AutomotiveEngineers (“SAE”) “Taxonomy and Definitions for Terms Related to DrivingAutomation Systems for On-Road Motor Vehicles” (e.g., Standard No.J3016-201806, published on Jun. 15, 2018, Standard No. J3016-201609,published on Sep. 30, 2016, and previous and future versions of thisstandard). In one or more embodiments, vehicle 1200 may be capable offunctionality in accordance with one or more of level 1-level 5 ofautonomous driving levels. For example, in at least one embodiment,vehicle 1200 may be capable of conditional automation (Level 3), highautomation (Level 4), and/or full automation (Level 5), depending onembodiment.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may include, withoutlimitation, components such as a chassis, a vehicle body, wheels (e.g.,2, 4, 6, 8, 18, etc.), tires, axles, and other components of a vehicle.In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may include, withoutlimitation, a propulsion system 1250, such as an internal combustionengine, hybrid electric power plant, an all-electric engine, and/oranother propulsion system type. In at least one embodiment, propulsionsystem 1250 may be connected to a drive train of vehicle 1200, which mayinclude, without limitation, a transmission, to enable propulsion ofvehicle 1200. In at least one embodiment, propulsion system 1250 may becontrolled in response to receiving signals from athrottle/accelerator(s) 1252.

In at least one embodiment, a steering system 1254, which may include,without limitation, a steering wheel, is used to steer a vehicle 1200(e.g., along a desired path or route) when a propulsion system 1250 isoperating (e.g., when vehicle is in motion). In at least one embodiment,a steering system 1254 may receive signals from steering actuator(s)1256. Steering wheel may be optional for full automation (Level 5)functionality. In at least one embodiment, a brake sensor system 1246may be used to operate vehicle brakes in response to receiving signalsfrom brake actuator(s) 1248 and/or brake sensors.

In at least one embodiment, controller(s) 1236, which may include,without limitation, one or more system on chips (“SoCs”) (not shown inFIG. 12A) and/or graphics processing unit(s) (“GPU(s)”), provide signals(e.g., representative of commands) to one or more components and/orsystems of vehicle 1200. For instance, in at least one embodiment,controller(s) 1236 may send signals to operate vehicle brakes via brakeactuators 1248, to operate steering system 1254 via steering actuator(s)1256, to operate propulsion system 1250 via throttle/accelerator(s)1252. Controller(s) 1236 may include one or more onboard (e.g.,integrated) computing devices (e.g., supercomputers) that process sensorsignals, and output operation commands (e.g., signals representingcommands) to enable autonomous driving and/or to assist a human driverin driving vehicle 1200. In at least one embodiment, controller(s) 1236may include a first controller 1236 for autonomous driving functions, asecond controller 1236 for functional safety functions, a thirdcontroller 1236 for artificial intelligence functionality (e.g.,computer vision), a fourth controller 1236 for infotainmentfunctionality, a fifth controller 1236 for redundancy in emergencyconditions, and/or other controllers. In at least one embodiment, asingle controller 1236 may handle two or more of above functionalities,two or more controllers 1236 may handle a single functionality, and/orany combination thereof.

In at least one embodiment, controller(s) 1236 provide signals forcontrolling one or more components and/or systems of vehicle 1200 inresponse to sensor data received from one or more sensors (e.g., sensorinputs). In at least one embodiment, sensor data may be received from,for example and without limitation, global navigation satellite systems(“GNSS”) sensor(s) 1258 (e.g., Global Positioning System sensor(s)),RADAR sensor(s) 1260, ultrasonic sensor(s) 1262, LIDAR sensor(s) 1264,inertial measurement unit (“IMU”) sensor(s) 1266 (e.g.,accelerometer(s), gyroscope(s), magnetic compass(es), magnetometer(s),etc.), microphone(s) 1296, stereo camera(s) 1268, wide-view camera(s)1270 (e.g., fisheye cameras), infrared camera(s) 1272, surroundcamera(s) 1274 (e.g., 360 degree cameras), long-range cameras (not shownin FIG. 12A), mid-range camera(s) (not shown in FIG. 12A), speedsensor(s) 1244 (e.g., for measuring speed of vehicle 1200), vibrationsensor(s) 1242, steering sensor(s) 1240, brake sensor(s) (e.g., as partof brake sensor system 1246), and/or other sensor types.

In at least one embodiment, one or more of controller(s) 1236 mayreceive inputs (e.g., represented by input data) from an instrumentcluster 1232 of vehicle 1200 and provide outputs (e.g., represented byoutput data, display data, etc.) via a human-machine interface (“HMI”)display 1234, an audible annunciator, a loudspeaker, and/or via othercomponents of vehicle 1200. In at least one embodiment, outputs mayinclude information such as vehicle velocity, speed, time, map data(e.g., a High Definition map (not shown in FIG. 12A), location data(e.g., vehicle's 1200 location, such as on a map), direction, locationof other vehicles (e.g., an occupancy grid), information about objectsand status of objects as perceived by controller(s) 1236, etc. Forexample, in at least one embodiment, HMI display 1234 may displayinformation about presence of one or more objects (e.g., a street sign,caution sign, traffic light changing, etc.), and/or information aboutdriving maneuvers vehicle has made, is making, or will make (e.g.,changing lanes now, taking exit 34B in two miles, etc.).

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 further includes a networkinterface 1224 which may use wireless antenna(s) 1226 and/or modem(s) tocommunicate over one or more networks. For example, in at least oneembodiment, network interface 1224 may be capable of communication overLong-Term Evolution (“LTE”), Wideband Code Division Multiple Access(“WCDMA”), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (“UMTS”), GlobalSystem for Mobile communication (“GSM”), IMT-CDMA Multi-Carrier(“CDMA2000”), etc. In at least one embodiment, wireless antenna(s) 1226may also enable communication between objects in environment (e.g.,vehicles, mobile devices, etc.), using local area network(s), such asBluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy (“LE”), Z-Wave, ZigBee, etc., and/or lowpower wide-area network(s) (“LPWANs”), such as LoRaWAN, SigFox, etc.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in systemFIG. 12A for inferencing or predicting operations based, at least inpart, on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

FIG. 12B illustrates an example of camera locations and fields of viewfor autonomous vehicle 1200 of FIG. 12A, according to at least oneembodiment. In at least one embodiment, cameras and respective fields ofview are one example embodiment and are not intended to be limiting. Forinstance, in at least one embodiment, additional and/or alternativecameras may be included and/or cameras may be located at differentlocations on vehicle 1200.

In at least one embodiment, camera types for cameras may include, butare not limited to, digital cameras that may be adapted for use withcomponents and/or systems of vehicle 1200. Camera(s) may operate atautomotive safety integrity level (“ASIL”) B and/or at another ASIL. Inat least one embodiment, camera types may be capable of any imagecapture rate, such as 60 frames per second (fps), 1220 fps, 240 fps,etc., depending on embodiment. In at least one embodiment, cameras maybe capable of using rolling shutters, global shutters, another type ofshutter, or a combination thereof. In at least one embodiment, colorfilter array may include a red clear clear clear (“RCCC”) color filterarray, a red clear clear blue (“RCCB”) color filter array, a red bluegreen clear (“RBGC”) color filter array, a Foveon X3 color filter array,a Bayer sensors (“RGGB”) color filter array, a monochrome sensor colorfilter array, and/or another type of color filter array. In at least oneembodiment, clear pixel cameras, such as cameras with an RCCC, an RCCB,and/or an RBGC color filter array, may be used in an effort to increaselight sensitivity.

In at least one embodiment, one or more of camera(s) may be used toperform advanced driver assistance systems (“ADAS”) functions (e.g., aspart of a redundant or fail-safe design). For example, in at least oneembodiment, a Multi-Function Mono Camera may be installed to providefunctions including lane departure warning, traffic sign assist andintelligent headlamp control. In at least one embodiment, one or more ofcamera(s) (e.g., all of cameras) may record and provide image data(e.g., video) simultaneously.

In at least one embodiment, one or more of cameras may be mounted in amounting assembly, such as a custom designed (three-dimensional (“3D”)printed) assembly, in order to cut out stray light and reflections fromwithin car (e.g., reflections from dashboard reflected in windshieldmirrors) which may interfere with camera's image data capture abilities.With reference to wing-mirror mounting assemblies, in at least oneembodiment, wing-mirror assemblies may be custom 3D printed so thatcamera mounting plate matches shape of wing-mirror. In at least oneembodiment, camera(s) may be integrated into wing-mirror. For side-viewcameras, camera(s) may also be integrated within four pillars at eachcorner of cab in at least one embodiment.

In at least one embodiment, cameras with a field of view that includeportions of environment in front of vehicle 1200 (e.g., front-facingcameras) may be used for surround view, to help identify forward facingpaths and obstacles, as well as aid in, with help of one or more ofcontrollers 1236 and/or control SoCs, providing information critical togenerating an occupancy grid and/or determining preferred vehicle paths.In at least one embodiment, front-facing cameras may be used to performmany of same ADAS functions as LIDAR, including, without limitation,emergency braking, pedestrian detection, and collision avoidance. In atleast one embodiment, front-facing cameras may also be used for ADASfunctions and systems including, without limitation, Lane DepartureWarnings (“LDW”), Autonomous Cruise Control (“ACC”), and/or otherfunctions such as traffic sign recognition.

In at least one embodiment, a variety of cameras may be used in afront-facing configuration, including, for example, a monocular cameraplatform that includes a CMOS (“complementary metal oxidesemiconductor”) color imager. In at least one embodiment, wide-viewcamera 1270 may be used to perceive objects coming into view fromperiphery (e.g., pedestrians, crossing traffic or bicycles). Althoughonly one wide-view camera 1270 is illustrated in FIG. 12B, in otherembodiments, there may be any number (including zero) of wide-viewcamera(s) 1270 on vehicle 1200. In at least one embodiment, any numberof long-range camera(s) 1298 (e.g., a long-view stereo camera pair) maybe used for depth-based object detection, especially for objects forwhich a neural network has not yet been trained. In at least oneembodiment, long-range camera(s) 1298 may also be used for objectdetection and classification, as well as basic object tracking.

In at least one embodiment, any number of stereo camera(s) 1268 may alsobe included in a front-facing configuration. In at least one embodiment,one or more of stereo camera(s) 1268 may include an integrated controlunit comprising a scalable processing unit, which may provide aprogrammable logic (“FPGA”) and a multi-core micro-processor with anintegrated Controller Area Network (“CAN”) or Ethernet interface on asingle chip. In at least one embodiment, such a unit may be used togenerate a 3D map of environment of vehicle 1200, including a distanceestimate for all points in image. In at least one embodiment, one ormore of stereo camera(s) 1268 may include, without limitation, compactstereo vision sensor(s) that may include, without limitation, two cameralenses (one each on left and right) and an image processing chip thatmay measure distance from vehicle 1200 to target object and usegenerated information (e.g., metadata) to activate autonomous emergencybraking and lane departure warning functions. In at least oneembodiment, other types of stereo camera(s) 1268 may be used in additionto, or alternatively from, those described herein.

In at least one embodiment, cameras with a field of view that includeportions of environment to side of vehicle 1200 (e.g., side-viewcameras) may be used for surround view, providing information used tocreate and update occupancy grid, as well as to generate side impactcollision warnings. For example, in at least one embodiment, surroundcamera(s) 1274 (e.g., four surround cameras 1274 as illustrated in FIG.12B) could be positioned on vehicle 1200. Surround camera(s) 1274 mayinclude, without limitation, any number and combination of wide-viewcamera(s) 1270, fisheye camera(s), 360 degree camera(s), and/or like.For instance, in at least one embodiment, four fisheye cameras may bepositioned on front, rear, and sides of vehicle 1200. In at least oneembodiment, vehicle 1200 may use three surround camera(s) 1274 (e.g.,left, right, and rear), and may leverage one or more other camera(s)(e.g., a forward-facing camera) as a fourth surround-view camera.

In at least one embodiment, cameras with a field of view that includeportions of environment to rear of vehicle 1200 (e.g., rear-viewcameras) may be used for park assistance, surround view, rear collisionwarnings, and creating and updating occupancy grid. In at least oneembodiment, a wide variety of cameras may be used including, but notlimited to, cameras that are also suitable as a front-facing camera(s)(e.g., long-range cameras 1298 and/or mid-range camera(s) 1276, stereocamera(s) 1268), infrared camera(s) 1272, etc.), as described herein.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in systemFIG. 12B for inferencing or predicting operations based, at least inpart, on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

FIG. 12C is a block diagram illustrating an example system architecturefor autonomous vehicle 1200 of FIG. 12A, according to at least oneembodiment. In at least one embodiment, each of components, features,and systems of vehicle 1200 in FIG. 12C are illustrated as beingconnected via a bus 1202. In at least one embodiment, bus 1202 mayinclude, without limitation, a CAN data interface (alternativelyreferred to herein as a “CAN bus”). In at least one embodiment, a CANmay be a network inside vehicle 1200 used to aid in control of variousfeatures and functionality of vehicle 1200, such as actuation of brakes,acceleration, braking, steering, windshield wipers, etc. In at least oneembodiment, bus 1202 may be configured to have dozens or even hundredsof nodes, each with its own unique identifier (e.g., a CAN ID). In atleast one embodiment, bus 1202 may be read to find steering wheel angle,ground speed, engine revolutions per minute (“RPMs”), button positions,and/or other vehicle status indicators. In at least one embodiment, bus1202 may be a CAN bus that is ASIL B compliant.

In at least one embodiment, in addition to, or alternatively from CAN,FlexRay and/or Ethernet may be used. In at least one embodiment, theremay be any number of busses 1202, which may include, without limitation,zero or more CAN busses, zero or more FlexRay busses, zero or moreEthernet busses, and/or zero or more other types of busses using adifferent protocol. In at least one embodiment, two or more busses 1202may be used to perform different functions, and/or may be used forredundancy. For example, a first bus 1202 may be used for collisionavoidance functionality and a second bus 1202 may be used for actuationcontrol. In at least one embodiment, each bus 1202 may communicate withany of components of vehicle 1200, and two or more busses 1202 maycommunicate with same components. In at least one embodiment, each ofany number of system(s) on chip(s) (“SoC(s)”) 1204, each ofcontroller(s) 1236, and/or each computer within vehicle may have accessto same input data (e.g., inputs from sensors of vehicle 1200), and maybe connected to a common bus, such CAN bus.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may include one or morecontroller(s) 1236, such as those described herein with respect to FIG.12A. Controller(s) 1236 may be used for a variety of functions. In atleast one embodiment, controller(s) 1236 may be coupled to any ofvarious other components and systems of vehicle 1200, and may be usedfor control of vehicle 1200, artificial intelligence of vehicle 1200,infotainment for vehicle 1200, and/or like.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may include any number of SoCs1204. Each of SoCs 1204 may include, without limitation, centralprocessing units (“CPU(s)”) 1206, graphics processing units (“GPU(s)”)1208, processor(s) 1210, cache(s) 1212, accelerator(s) 1214, datastore(s) 1216, and/or other components and features not illustrated. Inat least one embodiment, SoC(s) 1204 may be used to control vehicle 1200in a variety of platforms and systems. For example, in at least oneembodiment, SoC(s) 1204 may be combined in a system (e.g., system ofvehicle 1200) with a High Definition (“HD”) map 1222 which may obtainmap refreshes and/or updates via network interface 1224 from one or moreservers (not shown in FIG. 12C).

In at least one embodiment, CPU(s) 1206 may include a CPU cluster or CPUcomplex (alternatively referred to herein as a “CCPLEX”). In at leastone embodiment, CPU(s) 1206 may include multiple cores and/or level two(“L2”) caches. For instance, in at least one embodiment, CPU(s) 1206 mayinclude eight cores in a coherent multi-processor configuration. In atleast one embodiment, CPU(s) 1206 may include four dual-core clusterswhere each cluster has a dedicated L2 cache (e.g., a 2 MB L2 cache). Inat least one embodiment, CPU(s) 1206 (e.g., CCPLEX) may be configured tosupport simultaneous cluster operation enabling any combination ofclusters of CPU(s) 1206 to be active at any given time.

In at least one embodiment, one or more of CPU(s) 1206 may implementpower management capabilities that include, without limitation, one ormore of following features: individual hardware blocks may beclock-gated automatically when idle to save dynamic power; each coreclock may be gated when core is not actively executing instructions dueto execution of Wait for Interrupt (“WFI”)/Wait for Event (“WFE”)instructions; each core may be independently power-gated; each corecluster may be independently clock-gated when all cores are clock-gatedor power-gated; and/or each core cluster may be independentlypower-gated when all cores are power-gated. In at least one embodiment,CPU(s) 1206 may further implement an enhanced algorithm for managingpower states, where allowed power states and expected wakeup times arespecified, and hardware/microcode determines best power state to enterfor core, cluster, and CCPLEX. In at least one embodiment, processingcores may support simplified power state entry sequences in softwarewith work offloaded to microcode.

In at least one embodiment, GPU(s) 1208 may include an integrated GPU(alternatively referred to herein as an “iGPU”). In at least oneembodiment, GPU(s) 1208 may be programmable and may be efficient forparallel workloads. In at least one embodiment, GPU(s) 1208, in at leastone embodiment, may use an enhanced tensor instruction set. In onembodiment, GPU(s) 1208 may include one or more streamingmicroprocessors, where each streaming microprocessor may include a levelone (“L1”) cache (e.g., an L1 cache with at least 96 KB storagecapacity), and two or more of streaming microprocessors may share an L2cache (e.g., an L2 cache with a 512 KB storage capacity). In at leastone embodiment, GPU(s) 1208 may include at least eight streamingmicroprocessors. In at least one embodiment, GPU(s) 1208 may use computeapplication programming interface(s) (API(s)). In at least oneembodiment, GPU(s) 1208 may use one or more parallel computing platformsand/or programming models (e.g., NVIDIA's CUDA).

In at least one embodiment, one or more of GPU(s) 1208 may bepower-optimized for best performance in automotive and embedded usecases. For example, in on embodiment, GPU(s) 1208 could be fabricated ona Fin field-effect transistor (“FinFET”). In at least one embodiment,each streaming microprocessor may incorporate a number ofmixed-precision processing cores partitioned into multiple blocks. Forexample, and without limitation, 64 PF32 cores and 32 PF64 cores couldbe partitioned into four processing blocks. In at least one embodiment,each processing block could be allocated 16 FP32 cores, 8 FP64 cores, 16INT32 cores, two mixed-precision NVIDIA TENSOR COREs for deep learningmatrix arithmetic, a level zero (“L0”) instruction cache, a warpscheduler, a dispatch unit, and/or a 64 KB register file. In at leastone embodiment, streaming microprocessors may include independentparallel integer and floating-point data paths to provide for efficientexecution of workloads with a mix of computation and addressingcalculations. In at least one embodiment, streaming microprocessors mayinclude independent thread scheduling capability to enable finer-grainsynchronization and cooperation between parallel threads. In at leastone embodiment, streaming microprocessors may include a combined L1 datacache and shared memory unit in order to improve performance whilesimplifying programming.

In at least one embodiment, one or more of GPU(s) 1208 may include ahigh bandwidth memory (“HBM) and/or a 16 GB HBM2 memory subsystem toprovide, in some examples, about 900 GB/second peak memory bandwidth. Inat least one embodiment, in addition to, or alternatively from, HBMmemory, a synchronous graphics random-access memory (“SGRAM”) may beused, such as a graphics double data rate type five synchronousrandom-access memory (“GDDR5”).

In at least one embodiment, GPU(s) 1208 may include unified memorytechnology. In at least one embodiment, address translation services(“ATS”) support may be used to allow GPU(s) 1208 to access CPU(s) 1206page tables directly. In at least one embodiment, embodiment, whenGPU(s) 1208 memory management unit (“MMU”) experiences a miss, anaddress translation request may be transmitted to CPU(s) 1206. Inresponse, CPU(s) 1206 may look in its page tables forvirtual-to-physical mapping for address and transmits translation backto GPU(s) 1208, in at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment,unified memory technology may allow a single unified virtual addressspace for memory of both CPU(s) 1206 and GPU(s) 1208, therebysimplifying GPU(s) 1208 programming and porting of applications toGPU(s) 1208.

In at least one embodiment, GPU(s) 1208 may include any number of accesscounters that may keep track of frequency of access of GPU(s) 1208 tomemory of other processors. In at least one embodiment, accesscounter(s) may help ensure that memory pages are moved to physicalmemory of processor that is accessing pages most frequently, therebyimproving efficiency for memory ranges shared between processors.

In at least one embodiment, one or more of SoC(s) 1204 may include anynumber of cache(s) 1212, including those described herein. For example,in at least one embodiment, cache(s) 1212 could include a level three(“L3”) cache that is available to both CPU(s) 1206 and GPU(s) 1208(e.g., that is connected both CPU(s) 1206 and GPU(s) 1208). In at leastone embodiment, cache(s) 1212 may include a write-back cache that maykeep track of states of lines, such as by using a cache coherenceprotocol (e.g., MEI, MESI, MSI, etc.). In at least one embodiment, L3cache may include 4 MB or more, depending on embodiment, althoughsmaller cache sizes may be used.

In at least one embodiment, one or more of SoC(s) 1204 may include oneor more accelerator(s) 1214 (e.g., hardware accelerators, softwareaccelerators, or a combination thereof). In at least one embodiment,SoC(s) 1204 may include a hardware acceleration cluster that may includeoptimized hardware accelerators and/or large on-chip memory. In at leastone embodiment, large on-chip memory (e.g., 4 MB of SRAM), may enablehardware acceleration cluster to accelerate neural networks and othercalculations. In at least one embodiment, hardware acceleration clustermay be used to complement GPU(s) 1208 and to off-load some of tasks ofGPU(s) 1208 (e.g., to free up more cycles of GPU(s) 1208 for performingother tasks). In at least one embodiment, accelerator(s) 1214 could beused for targeted workloads (e.g., perception, convolutional neuralnetworks (“CNNs”), recurrent neural networks (“RNNs”), etc.) that arestable enough to be amenable to acceleration. In at least oneembodiment, a CNN may include a region-based or regional convolutionalneural networks (“RCNNs”) and Fast RCNNs (e.g., as used for objectdetection) or other type of CNN.

In at least one embodiment, accelerator(s) 1214 (e.g., hardwareacceleration cluster) may include a deep learning accelerator(s) (“DLA).DLA(s) may include, without limitation, one or more Tensor processingunits (“TPUs) that may be configured to provide an additional tentrillion operations per second for deep learning applications andinferencing. In at least one embodiment, TPUs may be acceleratorsconfigured to, and optimized for, performing image processing functions(e.g., for CNNs, RCNNs, etc.). DLA(s) may further be optimized for aspecific set of neural network types and floating point operations, aswell as inferencing. In at least one embodiment, design of DLA(s) mayprovide more performance per millimeter than a typical general-purposeGPU, and typically vastly exceeds performance of a CPU. In at least oneembodiment, TPU(s) may perform several functions, including asingle-instance convolution function, supporting, for example, INT8,INT16, and FP16 data types for both features and weights, as well aspost-processor functions. In at least one embodiment, DLA(s) may quicklyand efficiently execute neural networks, especially CNNs, on processedor unprocessed data for any of a variety of functions, including, forexample and without limitation: a CNN for object identification anddetection using data from camera sensors; a CNN for distance estimationusing data from camera sensors; a CNN for emergency vehicle detectionand identification and detection using data from microphones 1296; a CNNfor facial recognition and vehicle owner identification using data fromcamera sensors; and/or a CNN for security and/or safety related events.

In at least one embodiment, DLA(s) may perform any function of GPU(s)1208, and by using an inference accelerator, for example, a designer maytarget either DLA(s) or GPU(s) 1208 for any function. For example, in atleast one embodiment, designer may focus processing of CNNs and floatingpoint operations on DLA(s) and leave other functions to GPU(s) 1208and/or other accelerator(s) 1214.

In at least one embodiment, accelerator(s) 1214 (e.g., hardwareacceleration cluster) may include a programmable vision accelerator(s)(“PVA”), which may alternatively be referred to herein as a computervision accelerator. In at least one embodiment, PVA(s) may be designedand configured to accelerate computer vision algorithms for advanceddriver assistance system (“ADAS”) 1238, autonomous driving, augmentedreality (“AR”) applications, and/or virtual reality (“VR”) applications.PVA(s) may provide a balance between performance and flexibility. Forexample, in at least one embodiment, each PVA(s) may include, forexample and without limitation, any number of reduced instruction setcomputer (“RISC”) cores, direct memory access (“DMA”), and/or any numberof vector processors.

In at least one embodiment, RISC cores may interact with image sensors(e.g., image sensors of any of cameras described herein), image signalprocessor(s), and/or like. In at least one embodiment, each of RISCcores may include any amount of memory. In at least one embodiment, RISCcores may use any of a number of protocols, depending on embodiment. Inat least one embodiment, RISC cores may execute a real-time operatingsystem (“RTOS”). In at least one embodiment, RISC cores may beimplemented using one or more integrated circuit devices, applicationspecific integrated circuits (“ASICs”), and/or memory devices. Forexample, in at least one embodiment, RISC cores could include aninstruction cache and/or a tightly coupled RAM.

In at least one embodiment, DMA may enable components of PVA(s) toaccess system memory independently of CPU(s) 1206. In at least oneembodiment, DMA may support any number of features used to provideoptimization to PVA including, but not limited to, supportingmulti-dimensional addressing and/or circular addressing. In at least oneembodiment, DMA may support up to six or more dimensions of addressing,which may include, without limitation, block width, block height, blockdepth, horizontal block stepping, vertical block stepping, and/or depthstepping.

In at least one embodiment, vector processors may be programmableprocessors that may be designed to efficiently and flexibly executeprogramming for computer vision algorithms and provide signal processingcapabilities. In at least one embodiment, PVA may include a PVA core andtwo vector processing subsystem partitions. In at least one embodiment,PVA core may include a processor subsystem, DMA engine(s) (e.g., two DMAengines), and/or other peripherals. In at least one embodiment, vectorprocessing subsystem may operate as primary processing engine of PVA,and may include a vector processing unit (“VPU”), an instruction cache,and/or vector memory (e.g., “VMEM”). In at least one embodiment, VPUcore may include a digital signal processor such as, for example, asingle instruction, multiple data (“SIMD”), very long instruction word(“VLIW”) digital signal processor. In at least one embodiment, acombination of SIMD and VLIW may enhance throughput and speed.

In at least one embodiment, each of vector processors may include aninstruction cache and may be coupled to dedicated memory. As a result,in at least one embodiment, each of vector processors may be configuredto execute independently of other vector processors. In at least oneembodiment, vector processors that are included in a particular PVA maybe configured to employ data parallelism. For instance, in at least oneembodiment, plurality of vector processors included in a single PVA mayexecute same computer vision algorithm, but on different regions of animage. In at least one embodiment, vector processors included in aparticular PVA may simultaneously execute different computer visionalgorithms, on same image, or even execute different algorithms onsequential images or portions of an image. In at least one embodiment,among other things, any number of PVAs may be included in hardwareacceleration cluster and any number of vector processors may be includedin each of PVAs. In at least one embodiment, PVA(s) may includeadditional error correcting code (“ECC”) memory, to enhance overallsystem safety.

In at least one embodiment, accelerator(s) 1214 (e.g., hardwareacceleration cluster) may include a computer vision network on-chip andstatic random-access memory (“SRAM”), for providing a high-bandwidth,low latency SRAM for accelerator(s) 1214. In at least one embodiment,on-chip memory may include at least 4 MB SRAM, consisting of, forexample and without limitation, eight field-configurable memory blocks,that may be accessible by both PVA and DLA. In at least one embodiment,each pair of memory blocks may include an advanced peripheral bus(“APB”) interface, configuration circuitry, a controller, and amultiplexer. In at least one embodiment, any type of memory may be used.In at least one embodiment, PVA and DLA may access memory via a backbonethat provides PVA and DLA with high-speed access to memory. In at leastone embodiment, backbone may include a computer vision network on-chipthat interconnects PVA and DLA to memory (e.g., using APB).

In at least one embodiment, computer vision network on-chip may includean interface that determines, before transmission of any controlsignal/address/data, that both PVA and DLA provide ready and validsignals. In at least one embodiment, an interface may provide forseparate phases and separate channels for transmitting controlsignals/addresses/data, as well as burst-type communications forcontinuous data transfer. In at least one embodiment, an interface maycomply with International Organization for Standardization (“ISO”) 26262or International Electrotechnical Commission (“IEC”) 61508 standards,although other standards and protocols may be used.

In at least one embodiment, one or more of SoC(s) 1204 may include areal-time ray-tracing hardware accelerator. In at least one embodiment,real-time ray-tracing hardware accelerator may be used to quickly andefficiently determine positions and extents of objects (e.g., within aworld model), to generate real-time visualization simulations, for RADARsignal interpretation, for sound propagation synthesis and/or analysis,for simulation of SONAR systems, for general wave propagationsimulation, for comparison to LIDAR data for purposes of localizationand/or other functions, and/or for other uses.

In at least one embodiment, accelerator(s) 1214 (e.g., hardwareaccelerator cluster) have a wide array of uses for autonomous driving.In at least one embodiment, PVA may be a programmable vision acceleratorthat may be used for key processing stages in ADAS and autonomousvehicles. In at least one embodiment, PVA's capabilities are a goodmatch for algorithmic domains needing predictable processing, at lowpower and low latency. In other words, PVA performs well on semi-denseor dense regular computation, even on small data sets, which needpredictable run-times with low latency and low power. In at least oneembodiment, autonomous vehicles, such as vehicle 1200, PVAs are designedto run classic computer vision algorithms, as they are efficient atobject detection and operating on integer math.

For example, according to at least one embodiment of technology, PVA isused to perform computer stereo vision. In at least one embodiment,semi-global matching-based algorithm may be used in some examples,although this is not intended to be limiting. In at least oneembodiment, applications for Level 3-5 autonomous driving use motionestimation/stereo matching on-the-fly (e.g., structure from motion,pedestrian recognition, lane detection, etc.). In at least oneembodiment, PVA may perform computer stereo vision function on inputsfrom two monocular cameras.

In at least one embodiment, PVA may be used to perform dense opticalflow. For example, in at least one embodiment, PVA could process rawRADAR data (e.g., using a 4D Fast Fourier Transform) to provideprocessed RADAR data. In at least one embodiment, PVA is used for timeof flight depth processing, by processing raw time of flight data toprovide processed time of flight data, for example.

In at least one embodiment, DLA may be used to run any type of networkto enhance control and driving safety, including for example and withoutlimitation, a neural network that outputs a measure of confidence foreach object detection. In at least one embodiment, confidence may berepresented or interpreted as a probability, or as providing a relative“weight” of each detection compared to other detections. In at least oneembodiment, confidence enables a system to make further decisionsregarding which detections should be considered as true positivedetections rather than false positive detections. For example, in atleast one embodiment, a system may set a threshold value for confidenceand consider only detections exceeding threshold value as true positivedetections. In an embodiment in which an automatic emergency braking(“AEB”) system is used, false positive detections would cause vehicle toautomatically perform emergency braking, which is obviously undesirable.In at least one embodiment, highly confident detections may beconsidered as triggers for AEB In at least one embodiment, DLA may run aneural network for regressing confidence value. In at least oneembodiment, neural network may take as its input at least some subset ofparameters, such as bounding box dimensions, ground plane estimateobtained (e.g. from another subsystem), output from IMU sensor(s) 1266that correlates with vehicle 1200 orientation, distance, 3D locationestimates of object obtained from neural network and/or other sensors(e.g., LIDAR sensor(s) 1264 or RADAR sensor(s) 1260), among others.

In at least one embodiment, one or more of SoC(s) 1204 may include datastore(s) 1216 (e.g., memory). In at least one embodiment, data store(s)1216 may be on-chip memory of SoC(s) 1204, which may store neuralnetworks to be executed on GPU(s) 1208 and/or DLA. In at least oneembodiment, data store(s) 1216 may be large enough in capacity to storemultiple instances of neural networks for redundancy and safety. In atleast one embodiment, data store(s) 1212 may comprise L2 or L3 cache(s).

In at least one embodiment, one or more of SoC(s) 1204 may include anynumber of processor(s) 1210 (e.g., embedded processors). Processor(s)1210 may include a boot and power management processor that may be adedicated processor and subsystem to handle boot power and managementfunctions and related security enforcement. In at least one embodiment,boot and power management processor may be a part of SoC(s) 1204 bootsequence and may provide runtime power management services. In at leastone embodiment, boot power and management processor may provide clockand voltage programming, assistance in system low power statetransitions, management of SoC(s) 1204 thermals and temperature sensors,and/or management of SoC(s) 1204 power states. In at least oneembodiment, each temperature sensor may be implemented as aring-oscillator whose output frequency is proportional to temperature,and SoC(s) 1204 may use ring-oscillators to detect temperatures ofCPU(s) 1206, GPU(s) 1208, and/or accelerator(s) 1214. In at least oneembodiment, if temperatures are determined to exceed a threshold, thenboot and power management processor may enter a temperature faultroutine and put SoC(s) 1204 into a lower power state and/or put vehicle1200 into a chauffeur to safe stop mode (e.g., bring vehicle 1200 to asafe stop).

In at least one embodiment, processor(s) 1210 may further include a setof embedded processors that may serve as an audio processing engine. Inat least one embodiment, audio processing engine may be an audiosubsystem that enables full hardware support for multi-channel audioover multiple interfaces, and a broad and flexible range of audio I/Ointerfaces. In at least one embodiment, audio processing engine is adedicated processor core with a digital signal processor with dedicatedRAM.

In at least one embodiment, processor(s) 1210 may further include analways on processor engine that may provide necessary hardware featuresto support low power sensor management and wake use cases. In at leastone embodiment, always on processor engine may include, withoutlimitation, a processor core, a tightly coupled RAM, supportingperipherals (e.g., timers and interrupt controllers), various I/Ocontroller peripherals, and routing logic.

In at least one embodiment, processor(s) 1210 may further include asafety cluster engine that includes, without limitation, a dedicatedprocessor subsystem to handle safety management for automotiveapplications. In at least one embodiment, safety cluster engine mayinclude, without limitation, two or more processor cores, a tightlycoupled RAM, support peripherals (e.g., timers, an interrupt controller,etc.), and/or routing logic. In a safety mode, two or more cores mayoperate, in at least one embodiment, in a lockstep mode and function asa single core with comparison logic to detect any differences betweentheir operations. In at least one embodiment, processor(s) 1210 mayfurther include a real-time camera engine that may include, withoutlimitation, a dedicated processor subsystem for handling real-timecamera management. In at least one embodiment, processor(s) 1210 mayfurther include a high-dynamic range signal processor that may include,without limitation, an image signal processor that is a hardware enginethat is part of camera processing pipeline.

In at least one embodiment, processor(s) 1210 may include a video imagecompositor that may be a processing block (e.g., implemented on amicroprocessor) that implements video post-processing functions neededby a video playback application to produce final image for playerwindow. In at least one embodiment, video image compositor may performlens distortion correction on wide-view camera(s) 1270, surroundcamera(s) 1274, and/or on in-cabin monitoring camera sensor(s). In atleast one embodiment, in-cabin monitoring camera sensor(s) arepreferably monitored by a neural network running on another instance ofSoC 1204, configured to identify in cabin events and respondaccordingly. In at least one embodiment, an in-cabin system may perform,without limitation, lip reading to activate cellular service and place aphone call, dictate emails, change vehicle's destination, activate orchange vehicle's infotainment system and settings, or providevoice-activated web surfing. In at least one embodiment, certainfunctions are available to driver when vehicle is operating in anautonomous mode and are disabled otherwise.

In at least one embodiment, video image compositor may include enhancedtemporal noise reduction for both spatial and temporal noise reduction.For example, in at least one embodiment, where motion occurs in a video,noise reduction weights spatial information appropriately, decreasingweight of information provided by adjacent frames. In at least oneembodiment, where an image or portion of an image does not includemotion, temporal noise reduction performed by video image compositor mayuse information from previous image to reduce noise in current image.

In at least one embodiment, video image compositor may also beconfigured to perform stereo rectification on input stereo lens frames.In at least one embodiment, video image compositor may further be usedfor user interface composition when operating system desktop is in use,and GPU(s) 1208 are not required to continuously render new surfaces. Inat least one embodiment, when GPU(s) 1208 are powered on and activedoing 3D rendering, video image compositor may be used to offload GPU(s)1208 to improve performance and responsiveness.

In at least one embodiment, one or more of SoC(s) 1204 may furtherinclude a mobile industry processor interface (“MIPI”) camera serialinterface for receiving video and input from cameras, a high-speedinterface, and/or a video input block that may be used for camera andrelated pixel input functions. In at least one embodiment, one or moreof SoC(s) 1204 may further include an input/output controller(s) thatmay be controlled by software and may be used for receiving I/O signalsthat are uncommitted to a specific role.

In at least one embodiment, one or more of SoC(s) 1204 may furtherinclude a broad range of peripheral interfaces to enable communicationwith peripherals, audio encoders/decoders (“codecs”), power management,and/or other devices. SoC(s) 1204 may be used to process data fromcameras (e.g., connected over Gigabit Multimedia Serial Link andEthernet), sensors (e.g., LIDAR sensor(s) 1264, RADAR sensor(s) 1260,etc. that may be connected over Ethernet), data from bus 1202 (e.g.,speed of vehicle 1200, steering wheel position, etc.), data from GNSSsensor(s) 1258 (e.g., connected over Ethernet or CAN bus), etc. In atleast one embodiment, one or more of SoC(s) 1204 may further includededicated high-performance mass storage controllers that may includetheir own DMA engines, and that may be used to free CPU(s) 1206 fromroutine data management tasks.

In at least one embodiment, SoC(s) 1204 may be an end-to-end platformwith a flexible architecture that spans automation levels 3-5, therebyproviding a comprehensive functional safety architecture that leveragesand makes efficient use of computer vision and ADAS techniques fordiversity and redundancy, provides a platform for a flexible, reliabledriving software stack, along with deep learning tools. In at least oneembodiment, SoC(s) 1204 may be faster, more reliable, and even moreenergy-efficient and space-efficient than conventional systems. Forexample, in at least one embodiment, accelerator(s) 1214, when combinedwith CPU(s) 1206, GPU(s) 1208, and data store(s) 1216, may provide for afast, efficient platform for level 3-5 autonomous vehicles.

In at least one embodiment, computer vision algorithms may be executedon CPUs, which may be configured using high-level programming language,such as C programming language, to execute a wide variety of processingalgorithms across a wide variety of visual data. However, in at leastone embodiment, CPUs are oftentimes unable to meet performancerequirements of many computer vision applications, such as those relatedto execution time and power consumption, for example. In at least oneembodiment, many CPUs are unable to execute complex object detectionalgorithms in real-time, which is used in in-vehicle ADAS applicationsand in practical Level 3-5 autonomous vehicles.

Embodiments described herein allow for multiple neural networks to beperformed simultaneously and/or sequentially, and for results to becombined together to enable Level 3-5 autonomous driving functionality.For example, in at least one embodiment, a CNN executing on DLA ordiscrete GPU (e.g., GPU(s) 1220) may include text and word recognition,allowing supercomputer to read and understand traffic signs, includingsigns for which neural network has not been specifically trained. In atleast one embodiment, DLA may further include a neural network that isable to identify, interpret, and provide semantic understanding of sign,and to pass that semantic understanding to path planning modules runningon CPU Complex.

In at least one embodiment, multiple neural networks may be runsimultaneously, as for Level 3, 4, or 5 driving. For example, in atleast one embodiment, a warning sign consisting of “Caution: flashinglights indicate icy conditions,” along with an electric light, may beindependently or collectively interpreted by several neural networks. Inat least one embodiment, sign itself may be identified as a traffic signby a first deployed neural network (e.g., a neural network that has beentrained), text “flashing lights indicate icy conditions” may beinterpreted by a second deployed neural network, which informs vehicle'spath planning software (preferably executing on CPU Complex) that whenflashing lights are detected, icy conditions exist. In at least oneembodiment, flashing light may be identified by operating a thirddeployed neural network over multiple frames, informing vehicle'spath-planning software of presence (or absence) of flashing lights. Inat least one embodiment, all three neural networks may runsimultaneously, such as within DLA and/or on GPU(s) 1208.

In at least one embodiment, a CNN for facial recognition and vehicleowner identification may use data from camera sensors to identifypresence of an authorized driver and/or owner of vehicle 1200. In atleast one embodiment, an always on sensor processing engine may be usedto unlock vehicle when owner approaches driver door and turn on lights,and, in security mode, to disable vehicle when owner leaves vehicle. Inthis way, SoC(s) 1204 provide for security against theft and/orcarjacking.

In at least one embodiment, a CNN for emergency vehicle detection andidentification may use data from microphones 1296 to detect and identifyemergency vehicle sirens. In at least one embodiment, SoC(s) 1204 useCNN for classifying environmental and urban sounds, as well asclassifying visual data. In at least one embodiment, CNN running on DLAis trained to identify relative closing speed of emergency vehicle(e.g., by using Doppler effect). In at least one embodiment, CNN mayalso be trained to identify emergency vehicles specific to local area inwhich vehicle is operating, as identified by GNSS sensor(s) 1258. In atleast one embodiment, when operating in Europe, CNN will seek to detectEuropean sirens, and when in United States CNN will seek to identifyonly North American sirens. In at least one embodiment, once anemergency vehicle is detected, a control program may be used to executean emergency vehicle safety routine, slowing vehicle, pulling over toside of road, parking vehicle, and/or idling vehicle, with assistance ofultrasonic sensor(s) 1262, until emergency vehicle(s) passes.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may include CPU(s) 1218 (e.g.,discrete CPU(s), or dCPU(s)), that may be coupled to SoC(s) 1204 via ahigh-speed interconnect (e.g., PCIe). In at least one embodiment, CPU(s)1218 may include an X86 processor, for example. CPU(s) 1218 may be usedto perform any of a variety of functions, including arbitratingpotentially inconsistent results between ADAS sensors and SoC(s) 1204,and/or monitoring status and health of controller(s) 1236 and/or aninfotainment system on a chip (“infotainment SoC”) 1230, for example.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may include GPU(s) 1220 (e.g.,discrete GPU(s), or dGPU(s)), that may be coupled to SoC(s) 1204 via ahigh-speed interconnect (e.g., NVIDIA's NVLINK). In at least oneembodiment, GPU(s) 1220 may provide additional artificial intelligencefunctionality, such as by executing redundant and/or different neuralnetworks, and may be used to train and/or update neural networks basedat least in part on input (e.g., sensor data) from sensors of vehicle1200.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may further include networkinterface 1224 which may include, without limitation, wirelessantenna(s) 1226 (e.g., one or more wireless antennas 1226 for differentcommunication protocols, such as a cellular antenna, a Bluetoothantenna, etc.). In at least one embodiment, network interface 1224 maybe used to enable wireless connectivity over Internet with cloud (e.g.,with server(s) and/or other network devices), with other vehicles,and/or with computing devices (e.g., client devices of passengers). Inat least one embodiment, to communicate with other vehicles, a directlink may be established between vehicle 120 and other vehicle and/or anindirect link may be established (e.g., across networks and overInternet). In at least one embodiment, direct links may be providedusing a vehicle-to-vehicle communication link. A vehicle-to-vehiclecommunication link may provide vehicle 1200 information about vehiclesin proximity to vehicle 1200 (e.g., vehicles in front of, on side of,and/or behind vehicle 1200). In at least one embodiment, aforementionedfunctionality may be part of a cooperative adaptive cruise controlfunctionality of vehicle 1200.

In at least one embodiment, network interface 1224 may include a SoCthat provides modulation and demodulation functionality and enablescontroller(s) 1236 to communicate over wireless networks. In at leastone embodiment, network interface 1224 may include a radio frequencyfront-end for up-conversion from baseband to radio frequency, and downconversion from radio frequency to baseband. In at least one embodiment,frequency conversions may be performed in any technically feasiblefashion. For example, frequency conversions could be performed throughwell-known processes, and/or using super-heterodyne processes. In atleast one embodiment, radio frequency front end functionality may beprovided by a separate chip. In at least one embodiment, networkinterface may include wireless functionality for communicating over LTE,WCDMA, UMTS, GSM, CDMA2000, Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi, Z-Wave,ZigBee, LoRaWAN, and/or other wireless protocols.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may further include datastore(s) 1228 which may include, without limitation, off-chip (e.g., offSoC(s) 1204) storage. In at least one embodiment, data store(s) 1228 mayinclude, without limitation, one or more storage elements including RAM,SRAM, dynamic random-access memory (“DRAM”), video random-access memory(“VRAM”), Flash, hard disks, and/or other components and/or devices thatmay store at least one bit of data.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may further include GNSSsensor(s) 1258 (e.g., GPS and/or assisted GPS sensors), to assist inmapping, perception, occupancy grid generation, and/or path planningfunctions. In at least one embodiment, any number of GNSS sensor(s) 1258may be used, including, for example and without limitation, a GPS usinga USB connector with an Ethernet to Serial (e.g., RS-232) bridge.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may further include RADARsensor(s) 1260. RADAR sensor(s) 1260 may be used by vehicle 1200 forlong-range vehicle detection, even in darkness and/or severe weatherconditions. In at least one embodiment, RADAR functional safety levelsmay be ASIL B. RADAR sensor(s) 1260 may use CAN and/or bus 1202 (e.g.,to transmit data generated by RADAR sensor(s) 1260) for control and toaccess object tracking data, with access to Ethernet to access raw datain some examples. In at least one embodiment, wide variety of RADARsensor types may be used. For example, and without limitation, RADARsensor(s) 1260 may be suitable for front, rear, and side RADAR use. Inat least one embodiment, one or more of RADAR sensors(s) 1260 are PulseDoppler RADAR sensor(s).

In at least one embodiment, RADAR sensor(s) 1260 may include differentconfigurations, such as long-range with narrow field of view,short-range with wide field of view, short-range side coverage, etc. Inat least one embodiment, long-range RADAR may be used for adaptivecruise control functionality. In at least one embodiment, long-rangeRADAR systems may provide a broad field of view realized by two or moreindependent scans, such as within a 250 m range. In at least oneembodiment, RADAR sensor(s) 1260 may help in distinguishing betweenstatic and moving objects, and may be used by ADAS system 1238 foremergency brake assist and forward collision warning. Sensors 1260(s)included in a long-range RADAR system may include, without limitation,monostatic multimodal RADAR with multiple (e.g., six or more) fixedRADAR antennae and a high-speed CAN and FlexRay interface. In at leastone embodiment, with six antennae, central four antennae may create afocused beam pattern, designed to record vehicle's 1200 surroundings athigher speeds with minimal interference from traffic in adjacent lanes.In at least one embodiment, other two antennae may expand field of view,making it possible to quickly detect vehicles entering or leavingvehicle's 1200 lane.

In at least one embodiment, mid-range RADAR systems may include, as anexample, a range of up to 160 m (front) or 80 m (rear), and a field ofview of up to 42 degrees (front) or 150 degrees (rear). In at least oneembodiment, short-range RADAR systems may include, without limitation,any number of RADAR sensor(s) 1260 designed to be installed at both endsof rear bumper. When installed at both ends of rear bumper, in at leastone embodiment, a RADAR sensor system may create two beams thatconstantly monitor blind spot in rear and next to vehicle. In at leastone embodiment, short-range RADAR systems may be used in ADAS system1238 for blind spot detection and/or lane change assist.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may further include ultrasonicsensor(s) 1262. Ultrasonic sensor(s) 1262, which may be positioned atfront, back, and/or sides of vehicle 1200, may be used for park assistand/or to create and update an occupancy grid. In at least oneembodiment, a wide variety of ultrasonic sensor(s) 1262 may be used, anddifferent ultrasonic sensor(s) 1262 may be used for different ranges ofdetection (e.g., 2.5 m, 4 m). In at least one embodiment, ultrasonicsensor(s) 1262 may operate at functional safety levels of ASIL B.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may include LIDAR sensor(s)1264. LIDAR sensor(s) 1264 may be used for object and pedestriandetection, emergency braking, collision avoidance, and/or otherfunctions. In at least one embodiment, LIDAR sensor(s) 1264 may befunctional safety level ASIL B. In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200may include multiple LIDAR sensors 1264 (e.g., two, four, six, etc.)that may use Ethernet (e.g., to provide data to a Gigabit Ethernetswitch).

In at least one embodiment, LIDAR sensor(s) 1264 may be capable ofproviding a list of objects and their distances for a 360-degree fieldof view. In at least one embodiment, commercially available LIDARsensor(s) 1264 may have an advertised range of approximately 100 m, withan accuracy of 2 cm-3 cm, and with support for a 100 Mbps Ethernetconnection, for example. In at least one embodiment, one or morenon-protruding LIDAR sensors 1264 may be used. In such an embodiment,LIDAR sensor(s) 1264 may be implemented as a small device that may beembedded into front, rear, sides, and/or corners of vehicle 1200. In atleast one embodiment, LIDAR sensor(s) 1264, in such an embodiment, mayprovide up to a 120-degree horizontal and 35-degree verticalfield-of-view, with a 200 m range even for low-reflectivity objects. Inat least one embodiment, front-mounted LIDAR sensor(s) 1264 may beconfigured for a horizontal field of view between 45 degrees and 135degrees.

In at least one embodiment, LIDAR technologies, such as 3D flash LIDAR,may also be used. 3D Flash LIDAR uses a flash of a laser as atransmission source, to illuminate surroundings of vehicle 1200 up toapproximately 200 m. In at least one embodiment, a flash LIDAR unitincludes, without limitation, a receptor, which records laser pulsetransit time and reflected light on each pixel, which in turncorresponds to range from vehicle 1200 to objects. In at least oneembodiment, flash LIDAR may allow for highly accurate anddistortion-free images of surroundings to be generated with every laserflash. In at least one embodiment, four flash LIDAR sensors may bedeployed, one at each side of vehicle 1200. In at least one embodiment,3D flash LIDAR systems include, without limitation, a solid-state 3Dstaring array LIDAR camera with no moving parts other than a fan (e.g.,a non-scanning LIDAR device). In at least one embodiment, flash LIDARdevice may use a 5 nanosecond class I (eye-safe) laser pulse per frameand may capture reflected laser light in form of 3D range point cloudsand co-registered intensity data.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle may further include IMU sensor(s)1266. In at least one embodiment, IMU sensor(s) 1266 may be located at acenter of rear axle of vehicle 1200, in at least one embodiment. In atleast one embodiment, IMU sensor(s) 1266 may include, for example andwithout limitation, accelerometer(s), magnetometer(s), gyroscope(s),magnetic compass(es), and/or other sensor types. In at least oneembodiment, such as in six-axis applications, IMU sensor(s) 1266 mayinclude, without limitation, accelerometers and gyroscopes. In at leastone embodiment, such as in nine-axis applications, IMU sensor(s) 1266may include, without limitation, accelerometers, gyroscopes, andmagnetometers.

In at least one embodiment, IMU sensor(s) 1266 may be implemented as aminiature, high performance GPS-Aided Inertial Navigation System(“GPS/INS”) that combines micro-electro-mechanical systems (“MEMS”)inertial sensors, a high-sensitivity GPS receiver, and advanced Kalmanfiltering algorithms to provide estimates of position, velocity, andattitude. In at least one embodiment, IMU sensor(s) 1266 may enablevehicle 1200 to estimate heading without requiring input from a magneticsensor by directly observing and correlating changes in velocity fromGPS to IMU sensor(s) 1266. In at least one embodiment, IMU sensor(s)1266 and GNSS sensor(s) 1258 may be combined in a single integratedunit.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may include microphone(s) 1296placed in and/or around vehicle 1200. In at least one embodiment,microphone(s) 1296 may be used for emergency vehicle detection andidentification, among other things.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may further include any numberof camera types, including stereo camera(s) 1268, wide-view camera(s)1270, infrared camera(s) 1272, surround camera(s) 1274, long-rangecamera(s) 1298, mid-range camera(s) 1276, and/or other camera types. Inat least one embodiment, cameras may be used to capture image dataaround an entire periphery of vehicle 1200. In at least one embodiment,types of cameras used depends vehicle 1200. In at least one embodiment,any combination of camera types may be used to provide necessarycoverage around vehicle 1200. In at least one embodiment, number ofcameras may differ depending on embodiment. For example, in at least oneembodiment, vehicle 1200 could include six cameras, seven cameras, tencameras, twelve cameras, or another number of cameras. Cameras maysupport, as an example and without limitation, Gigabit Multimedia SerialLink (“GMSL”) and/or Gigabit Ethernet. In at least one embodiment, eachof camera(s) is described with more detail previously herein withrespect to FIG. 12A and FIG. 12B.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may further include vibrationsensor(s) 1242. Vibration sensor(s) 1242 may measure vibrations ofcomponents of vehicle 1200, such as axle(s). For example, in at leastone embodiment, changes in vibrations may indicate a change in roadsurfaces. In at least one embodiment, when two or more vibration sensors1242 are used, differences between vibrations may be used to determinefriction or slippage of road surface (e.g., when difference in vibrationis between a power-driven axle and a freely rotating axle).

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may include ADAS system 1238.ADAS system 1238 may include, without limitation, a SoC, in someexamples. In at least one embodiment, ADAS system 1238 may include,without limitation, any number and combination of anautonomous/adaptive/automatic cruise control (“ACC”) system, acooperative adaptive cruise control (“CACC”) system, a forward crashwarning (“FCW”) system, an automatic emergency braking (“AEB”) system, alane departure warning (“LDW)” system, a lane keep assist (“LKA”)system, a blind spot warning (“BSW”) system, a rear cross-trafficwarning (“RCTW”) system, a collision warning (“CW”) system, a lanecentering (“LC”) system, and/or other systems, features, and/orfunctionality.

In at least one embodiment, ACC system may use RADAR sensor(s) 1260,LIDAR sensor(s) 1264, and/or any number of camera(s). In at least oneembodiment, ACC system may include a longitudinal ACC system and/or alateral ACC system. In at least one embodiment, longitudinal ACC systemmonitors and controls distance to vehicle immediately ahead of vehicle1200 and automatically adjust speed of vehicle 1200 to maintain a safedistance from vehicles ahead. In at least one embodiment, lateral ACCsystem performs distance keeping, and advises vehicle 1200 to changelanes when necessary. In at least one embodiment, lateral ACC is relatedto other ADAS applications such as LC and CW.

In at least one embodiment, CACC system uses information from othervehicles that may be received via network interface 1224 and/or wirelessantenna(s) 1226 from other vehicles via a wireless link, or indirectly,over a network connection (e.g., over Internet). In at least oneembodiment, direct links may be provided by a vehicle-to-vehicle (“V2V”)communication link, while indirect links may be provided by aninfrastructure-to-vehicle (“I2V”) communication link. In general, V2Vcommunication concept provides information about immediately precedingvehicles (e.g., vehicles immediately ahead of and in same lane asvehicle 1200), while I2V communication concept provides informationabout traffic further ahead. In at least one embodiment, CACC system mayinclude either or both I2V and V2V information sources. In at least oneembodiment, given information of vehicles ahead of vehicle 1200, CACCsystem may be more reliable and it has potential to improve traffic flowsmoothness and reduce congestion on road.

In at least one embodiment, FCW system is designed to alert driver to ahazard, so that driver may take corrective action. In at least oneembodiment, FCW system uses a front-facing camera and/or RADAR sensor(s)1260, coupled to a dedicated processor, DSP, FPGA, and/or ASIC, that iselectrically coupled to driver feedback, such as a display, speaker,and/or vibrating component. In at least one embodiment, FCW system mayprovide a warning, such as in form of a sound, visual warning, vibrationand/or a quick brake pulse.

In at least one embodiment, AEB system detects an impending forwardcollision with another vehicle or other object, and may automaticallyapply brakes if driver does not take corrective action within aspecified time or distance parameter. In at least one embodiment, AEBsystem may use front-facing camera(s) and/or RADAR sensor(s) 1260,coupled to a dedicated processor, DSP, FPGA, and/or ASIC. In at leastone embodiment, when AEB system detects a hazard, AEB system typicallyfirst alerts driver to take corrective action to avoid collision and, ifdriver does not take corrective action, AEB system may automaticallyapply brakes in an effort to prevent, or at least mitigate, impact ofpredicted collision. In at least one embodiment, AEB system, may includetechniques such as dynamic brake support and/or crash imminent braking.

In at least one embodiment, LDW system provides visual, audible, and/ortactile warnings, such as steering wheel or seat vibrations, to alertdriver when vehicle 1200 crosses lane markings. In at least oneembodiment, LDW system does not activate when driver indicates anintentional lane departure, by activating a turn signal. In at least oneembodiment, LDW system may use front-side facing cameras, coupled to adedicated processor, DSP, FPGA, and/or ASIC, that is electricallycoupled to driver feedback, such as a display, speaker, and/or vibratingcomponent. In at least one embodiment, LKA system is a variation of LDWsystem. LKA system provides steering input or braking to correct vehicle1200 if vehicle 1200 starts to exit lane.

In at least one embodiment, BSW system detects and warns driver ofvehicles in an automobile's blind spot. In at least one embodiment, BSWsystem may provide a visual, audible, and/or tactile alert to indicatethat merging or changing lanes is unsafe. In at least one embodiment,BSW system may provide an additional warning when driver uses a turnsignal. In at least one embodiment, BSW system may use rear-side facingcamera(s) and/or RADAR sensor(s) 1260, coupled to a dedicated processor,DSP, FPGA, and/or ASIC, that is electrically coupled to driver feedback,such as a display, speaker, and/or vibrating component.

In at least one embodiment, RCTW system may provide visual, audible,and/or tactile notification when an object is detected outsiderear-camera range when vehicle 1200 is backing up. In at least oneembodiment, RCTW system includes AEB system to ensure that vehiclebrakes are applied to avoid a crash. In at least one embodiment, RCTWsystem may use one or more rear-facing RADAR sensor(s) 1260, coupled toa dedicated processor, DSP, FPGA, and/or ASIC, that is electricallycoupled to driver feedback, such as a display, speaker, and/or vibratingcomponent.

In at least one embodiment, conventional ADAS systems may be prone tofalse positive results which may be annoying and distracting to adriver, but typically are not catastrophic, because conventional ADASsystems alert driver and allow driver to decide whether a safetycondition truly exists and act accordingly. In at least one embodiment,vehicle 1200 itself decides, in case of conflicting results, whether toheed result from a primary computer or a secondary computer (e.g., firstcontroller 1236 or second controller 1236). For example, in at least oneembodiment, ADAS system 1238 may be a backup and/or secondary computerfor providing perception information to a backup computer rationalitymodule. In at least one embodiment, backup computer rationality monitormay run a redundant diverse software on hardware components to detectfaults in perception and dynamic driving tasks. In at least oneembodiment, outputs from ADAS system 1238 may be provided to asupervisory MCU. In at least one embodiment, if outputs from primarycomputer and secondary computer conflict, supervisory MCU determines howto reconcile conflict to ensure safe operation.

In at least one embodiment, primary computer may be configured toprovide supervisory MCU with a confidence score, indicating primarycomputer's confidence in chosen result. In at least one embodiment, ifconfidence score exceeds a threshold, supervisory MCU may follow primarycomputer's direction, regardless of whether secondary computer providesa conflicting or inconsistent result. In at least one embodiment, whereconfidence score does not meet threshold, and where primary andsecondary computer indicate different results (e.g., a conflict),supervisory MCU may arbitrate between computers to determine appropriateoutcome.

In at least one embodiment, supervisory MCU may be configured to run aneural network(s) that is trained and configured to determine, based atleast in part on outputs from primary computer and secondary computer,conditions under which secondary computer provides false alarms. In atleast one embodiment, neural network(s) in supervisory MCU may learnwhen secondary computer's output may be trusted, and when it cannot. Forexample, in at least one embodiment, when secondary computer is aRADAR-based FCW system, a neural network(s) in supervisory MCU may learnwhen FCW system is identifying metallic objects that are not, in fact,hazards, such as a drainage grate or manhole cover that triggers analarm. In at least one embodiment, when secondary computer is acamera-based LDW system, a neural network in supervisory MCU may learnto override LDW when bicyclists or pedestrians are present and a lanedeparture is, in fact, safest maneuver. In at least one embodiment,supervisory MCU may include at least one of a DLA or GPU suitable forrunning neural network(s) with associated memory. In at least oneembodiment, supervisory MCU may comprise and/or be included as acomponent of SoC(s) 1204.

In at least one embodiment, ADAS system 1238 may include a secondarycomputer that performs ADAS functionality using traditional rules ofcomputer vision. In at least one embodiment, secondary computer may useclassic computer vision rules (if-then), and presence of a neuralnetwork(s) in supervisory MCU may improve reliability, safety andperformance. For example, in at least one embodiment, diverseimplementation and intentional non-identity makes overall system morefault-tolerant, especially to faults caused by software (orsoftware-hardware interface) functionality. For example, in at least oneembodiment, if there is a software bug or error in software running onprimary computer, and non-identical software code running on secondarycomputer provides same overall result, then supervisory MCU may havegreater confidence that overall result is correct, and bug in softwareor hardware on primary computer is not causing material error.

In at least one embodiment, output of ADAS system 1238 may be fed intoprimary computer's perception block and/or primary computer's dynamicdriving task block. For example, in at least one embodiment, if ADASsystem 1238 indicates a forward crash warning due to an objectimmediately ahead, perception block may use this information whenidentifying objects. In at least one embodiment, secondary computer mayhave its own neural network which is trained and thus reduces risk offalse positives, as described herein.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may further includeinfotainment SoC 1230 (e.g., an in-vehicle infotainment system (IVI)).Although illustrated and described as an SoC, infotainment system 1230,in at least one embodiment, may not be an SoC, and may include, withoutlimitation, two or more discrete components. In at least one embodiment,infotainment SoC 1230 may include, without limitation, a combination ofhardware and software that may be used to provide audio (e.g., music, apersonal digital assistant, navigational instructions, news, radio,etc.), video (e.g., TV, movies, streaming, etc.), phone (e.g.,hands-free calling), network connectivity (e.g., LTE, WiFi, etc.),and/or information services (e.g., navigation systems, rear-parkingassistance, a radio data system, vehicle related information such asfuel level, total distance covered, brake fuel level, oil level, dooropen/close, air filter information, etc.) to vehicle 1200. For example,infotainment SoC 1230 could include radios, disk players, navigationsystems, video players, USB and Bluetooth connectivity, carputers,in-car entertainment, WiFi, steering wheel audio controls, hands freevoice control, a heads-up display (“HUD”), HMI display 1234, atelematics device, a control panel (e.g., for controlling and/orinteracting with various components, features, and/or systems), and/orother components. In at least one embodiment, infotainment SoC 1230 mayfurther be used to provide information (e.g., visual and/or audible) touser(s) of vehicle, such as information from ADAS system 1238,autonomous driving information such as planned vehicle maneuvers,trajectories, surrounding environment information (e.g., intersectioninformation, vehicle information, road information, etc.), and/or otherinformation.

In at least one embodiment, infotainment SoC 1230 may include any amountand type of GPU functionality. In at least one embodiment, infotainmentSoC 1230 may communicate over bus 1202 (e.g., CAN bus, Ethernet, etc.)with other devices, systems, and/or components of vehicle 1200. In atleast one embodiment, infotainment SoC 1230 may be coupled to asupervisory MCU such that GPU of infotainment system may perform someself-driving functions in event that primary controller(s) 1236 (e.g.,primary and/or backup computers of vehicle 1200) fail. In at least oneembodiment, infotainment SoC 1230 may put vehicle 1200 into a chauffeurto safe stop mode, as described herein.

In at least one embodiment, vehicle 1200 may further include instrumentcluster 1232 (e.g., a digital dash, an electronic instrument cluster, adigital instrument panel, etc.). Instrument cluster 1232 may include,without limitation, a controller and/or supercomputer (e.g., a discretecontroller or supercomputer). In at least one embodiment, instrumentcluster 1232 may include, without limitation, any number and combinationof a set of instrumentation such as a speedometer, fuel level, oilpressure, tachometer, odometer, turn indicators, gearshift positionindicator, seat belt warning light(s), parking-brake warning light(s),engine-malfunction light(s), supplemental restraint system (e.g.,airbag) information, lighting controls, safety system controls,navigation information, etc. In some examples, information may bedisplayed and/or shared among infotainment SoC 1230 and instrumentcluster 1232. In at least one embodiment, instrument cluster 1232 may beincluded as part of infotainment SoC 1230, or vice versa.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in systemFIG. 12C for inferencing or predicting operations based, at least inpart, on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

In at least one embodiment, various sensors described above can beapplied to the techniques illustrated and described in FIGS. 1-8 . In atleast one embodiment, for example, a lidar, radar, infrared sensor, orultrasonic sensor can be substituted for the camera, and images fed intothe neural network can be lidar images radar images, infrared images, orultrasonic data.

FIG. 12D is a diagram of a system 1276 for communication betweencloud-based server(s) and autonomous vehicle 1200 of FIG. 12A, accordingto at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, system 1276 mayinclude, without limitation, server(s) 1278, network(s) 1290, and anynumber and type of vehicles, including vehicle 1200. server(s) 1278 mayinclude, without limitation, a plurality of GPUs 1284(A)-1284(H)(collectively referred to herein as GPUs 1284), PCIe switches1282(A)-1282(H) (collectively referred to herein as PCIe switches 1282),and/or CPUs 1280(A)-1280(B) (collectively referred to herein as CPUs1280). GPUs 1284, CPUs 1280, and PCIe switches 1282 may beinterconnected with high-speed interconnects such as, for example andwithout limitation, NVLink interfaces 1288 developed by NVIDIA and/orPCIe connections 1286. In at least one embodiment, GPUs 1284 areconnected via an NVLink and/or NVSwitch SoC and GPUs 1284 and PCIeswitches 1282 are connected via PCIe interconnects. In at least oneembodiment, although eight GPUs 1284, two CPUs 1280, and four PCIeswitches 1282 are illustrated, this is not intended to be limiting. Inat least one embodiment, each of server(s) 1278 may include, withoutlimitation, any number of GPUs 1284, CPUs 1280, and/or PCIe switches1282, in any combination. For example, in at least one embodiment,server(s) 1278 could each include eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and/ormore GPUs 1284.

In at least one embodiment, server(s) 1278 may receive, over network(s)1290 and from vehicles, image data representative of images showingunexpected or changed road conditions, such as recently commencedroad-work. In at least one embodiment, server(s) 1278 may transmit, overnetwork(s) 1290 and to vehicles, neural networks 1292, updated neuralnetworks 1292, and/or map information 1294, including, withoutlimitation, information regarding traffic and road conditions. In atleast one embodiment, updates to map information 1294 may include,without limitation, updates for HD map 1222, such as informationregarding construction sites, potholes, detours, flooding, and/or otherobstructions. In at least one embodiment, neural networks 1292, updatedneural networks 1292, and/or map information 1294 may have resulted fromnew training and/or experiences represented in data received from anynumber of vehicles in environment, and/or based at least in part ontraining performed at a data center (e.g., using server(s) 1278 and/orother servers).

In at least one embodiment, server(s) 1278 may be used to train machinelearning models (e.g., neural networks) based at least in part ontraining data. Training data may be generated by vehicles, and/or may begenerated in a simulation (e.g., using a game engine). In at least oneembodiment, any amount of training data is tagged (e.g., whereassociated neural network benefits from supervised learning) and/orundergoes other pre-processing. In at least one embodiment, any amountof training data is not tagged and/or pre-processed (e.g., whereassociated neural network does not require supervised learning). In atleast one embodiment, once machine learning models are trained, machinelearning models may be used by vehicles (e.g., transmitted to vehiclesover network(s) 1290, and/or machine learning models may be used byserver(s) 1278 to remotely monitor vehicles.

In at least one embodiment, server(s) 1278 may receive data fromvehicles and apply data to up-to-date real-time neural networks forreal-time intelligent inferencing. In at least one embodiment, server(s)1278 may include deep-learning supercomputers and/or dedicated AIcomputers powered by GPU(s) 1284, such as a DGX and DGX Station machinesdeveloped by NVIDIA. However, in at least one embodiment, server(s) 1278may include deep learning infrastructure that use CPU-powered datacenters.

In at least one embodiment, deep-learning infrastructure of server(s)1278 may be capable of fast, real-time inferencing, and may use thatcapability to evaluate and verify health of processors, software, and/orassociated hardware in vehicle 1200. For example, in at least oneembodiment, deep-learning infrastructure may receive periodic updatesfrom vehicle 1200, such as a sequence of images and/or objects thatvehicle 1200 has located in that sequence of images (e.g., via computervision and/or other machine learning object classification techniques).In at least one embodiment, deep-learning infrastructure may run its ownneural network to identify objects and compare them with objectsidentified by vehicle 1200 and, if results do not match anddeep-learning infrastructure concludes that AI in vehicle 1200 ismalfunctioning, then server(s) 1278 may transmit a signal to vehicle1200 instructing a fail-safe computer of vehicle 1200 to assume control,notify passengers, and complete a safe parking maneuver.

In at least one embodiment, server(s) 1278 may include GPU(s) 1284 andone or more programmable inference accelerators (e.g., NVIDIA's TensorRT3). In at least one embodiment, combination of GPU-powered servers andinference acceleration may make real-time responsiveness possible. In atleast one embodiment, such as where performance is less critical,servers powered by CPUs, FPGAs, and other processors may be used forinferencing. In at least one embodiment, hardware structure(s) 915 areused to perform one or more embodiments. Details regarding hardwarestructure(x) 915 are provided herein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or9B.

Computer Systems

FIG. 13 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary computer system,which may be a system with interconnected devices and components, asystem-on-a-chip (SOC) or some combination thereof 1300 formed with aprocessor that may include execution units to execute an instruction,according to at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment,computer system 1300 may include, without limitation, a component, suchas a processor 1302 to employ execution units including logic to performalgorithms for process data, in accordance with present disclosure, suchas in embodiment described herein. In at least one embodiment, computersystem 1300 may include processors, such as PENTIUM® Processor family,Xeon™, Itanium®, XScale™ and/or StrongARM™, Intel® Core™, or Intel®Nervana™ microprocessors available from Intel Corporation of SantaClara, California, although other systems (including PCs having othermicroprocessors, engineering workstations, set-top boxes and like) mayalso be used. In at least one embodiment, computer system 1300 mayexecute a version of WINDOWS' operating system available from MicrosoftCorporation of Redmond, Wash., although other operating systems (UNIXand Linux for example), embedded software, and/or graphical userinterfaces, may also be used.

Embodiments may be used in other devices such as handheld devices andembedded applications. Some examples of handheld devices includecellular phones, Internet Protocol devices, digital cameras, personaldigital assistants (“PDAs”), and handheld PCs. In at least oneembodiment, embedded applications may include a microcontroller, adigital signal processor (“DSP”), system on a chip, network computers(“NetPCs”), set-top boxes, network hubs, wide area network (“WAN”)switches, or any other system that may perform one or more instructionsin accordance with at least one embodiment.

In at least one embodiment, computer system 1300 may include, withoutlimitation, processor 1302 that may include, without limitation, one ormore execution units 1308 to perform machine learning model trainingand/or inferencing according to techniques described herein. In at leastone embodiment, system 13 is a single processor desktop or serversystem, but in another embodiment system 13 may be a multiprocessorsystem. In at least one embodiment, processor 1302 may include, withoutlimitation, a complex instruction set computer (“CISC”) microprocessor,a reduced instruction set computing (“RISC”) microprocessor, a very longinstruction word (“VLIW”) microprocessor, a processor implementing acombination of instruction sets, or any other processor device, such asa digital signal processor, for example. In at least one embodiment,processor 1302 may be coupled to a processor bus 1310 that may transmitdata signals between processor 1302 and other components in computersystem 1300.

In at least one embodiment, processor 1302 may include, withoutlimitation, a Level 1 (“L1”) internal cache memory (“cache”) 1304. In atleast one embodiment, processor 1302 may have a single internal cache ormultiple levels of internal cache. In at least one embodiment, cachememory may reside external to processor 1302. Other embodiments may alsoinclude a combination of both internal and external caches depending onparticular implementation and needs. In at least one embodiment,register file 1306 may store different types of data in variousregisters including, without limitation, integer registers, floatingpoint registers, status registers, and instruction pointer register.

In at least one embodiment, execution unit 1308, including, withoutlimitation, logic to perform integer and floating point operations, alsoresides in processor 1302. Processor 1302 may also include a microcode(“ucode”) read only memory (“ROM”) that stores microcode for certainmacro instructions. In at least one embodiment, execution unit 1308 mayinclude logic to handle a packed instruction set 1309. In at least oneembodiment, by including packed instruction set 1309 in instruction setof a general-purpose processor 1302, along with associated circuitry toexecute instructions, operations used by many multimedia applicationsmay be performed using packed data in a general-purpose processor 1302.In one or more embodiments, many multimedia applications may beaccelerated and executed more efficiently by using full width of aprocessor's data bus for performing operations on packed data, which mayeliminate need to transfer smaller units of data across processor's databus to perform one or more operations one data element at a time.

In at least one embodiment, execution unit 1308 may also be used inmicrocontrollers, embedded processors, graphics devices, DSPs, and othertypes of logic circuits. In at least one embodiment, computer system1300 may include, without limitation, a memory 1320. In at least oneembodiment, memory 1320 may be implemented as a Dynamic Random AccessMemory (“DRAM”) device, a Static Random Access Memory (“SRAM”) device,flash memory device, or other memory device. Memory 1320 may storeinstruction(s) 1319 and/or data 1321 represented by data signals thatmay be executed by processor 1302.

In at least one embodiment, system logic chip may be coupled toprocessor bus 1310 and memory 1320. In at least one embodiment, systemlogic chip may include, without limitation, a memory controller hub(“MCH”) 1316, and processor 1302 may communicate with MCH 1316 viaprocessor bus 1310. In at least one embodiment, MCH 1316 may provide ahigh bandwidth memory path 1318 to memory 1320 for instruction and datastorage and for storage of graphics commands, data and textures. In atleast one embodiment, MCH 1316 may direct data signals between processor1302, memory 1320, and other components in computer system 1300 and tobridge data signals between processor bus 1310, memory 1320, and asystem I/O 1322. In at least one embodiment, system logic chip mayprovide a graphics port for coupling to a graphics controller. In atleast one embodiment, MCH 1316 may be coupled to memory 1320 through ahigh bandwidth memory path 1318 and graphics/video card 1312 may becoupled to MCH 1316 through an Accelerated Graphics Port (“AGP”)interconnect 1314.

In at least one embodiment, computer system 1300 may use system I/O 1322that is a proprietary hub interface bus to couple MCH 1316 to I/Ocontroller hub (“ICH”) 1330. In at least one embodiment, ICH 1330 mayprovide direct connections to some I/O devices via a local I/O bus. Inat least one embodiment, local I/O bus may include, without limitation,a high-speed I/O bus for connecting peripherals to memory 1320, chipset,and processor 1302. Examples may include, without limitation, an audiocontroller 1329, a firmware hub (“flash BIOS”) 1328, a wirelesstransceiver 1326, a data storage 1324, a legacy I/O controller 1323containing user input and keyboard interfaces, a serial expansion port1327, such as Universal Serial Bus (“USB”), and a network controller1334. Data storage 1324 may comprise a hard disk drive, a floppy diskdrive, a CD-ROM device, a flash memory device, or other mass storagedevice.

In at least one embodiment, FIG. 13 illustrates a system, which includesinterconnected hardware devices or “chips”, whereas in otherembodiments, FIG. 13 may illustrate an exemplary System on a Chip(“SoC”). In at least one embodiment, devices illustrated in FIG. 13 maybe interconnected with proprietary interconnects, standardizedinterconnects (e.g., PCIe) or some combination thereof. In at least oneembodiment, one or more components of system 1300 are interconnectedusing compute express link (CXL) interconnects.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in systemFIG. 13 for inferencing or predicting operations based, at least inpart, on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

FIG. 14 is a block diagram illustrating an electronic device 1400 forutilizing a processor 1410, according to at least one embodiment. In atleast one embodiment, electronic device 1400 may be, for example andwithout limitation, a notebook, a tower server, a rack server, a bladeserver, a laptop, a desktop, a tablet, a mobile device, a phone, anembedded computer, or any other suitable electronic device.

In at least one embodiment, system 1400 may include, without limitation,processor 1410 communicatively coupled to any suitable number or kind ofcomponents, peripherals, modules, or devices. In at least oneembodiment, processor 1410 coupled using a bus or interface, such as a1° C. bus, a System Management Bus (“SMBus”), a Low Pin Count (LPC) bus,a Serial Peripheral Interface (“SPI”), a High Definition Audio (“HDA”)bus, a Serial Advance Technology Attachment (“SATA”) bus, a UniversalSerial Bus (“USB”) (versions 1, 2, 3), or a Universal AsynchronousReceiver/Transmitter (“UART”) bus. In at least one embodiment, FIG. 14illustrates a system, which includes interconnected hardware devices or“chips”, whereas in other embodiments, FIG. 14 may illustrate anexemplary System on a Chip (“SoC”). In at least one embodiment, devicesillustrated in FIG. 14 may be interconnected with proprietaryinterconnects, standardized interconnects (e.g., PCIe) or somecombination thereof. In at least one embodiment, one or more componentsof FIG. 14 are interconnected using compute express link (CXL)interconnects.

In at least one embodiment, FIG. 14 may include a display 1424, a touchscreen 1425, a touch pad 1430, a Near Field Communications unit (“NFC”)1445, a sensor hub 1440, a thermal sensor 1446, an Express Chipset(“EC”) 1435, a Trusted Platform Module (“TPM”) 1438, BIOS/firmware/flashmemory (“BIOS, FW Flash”) 1422, a DSP 1460, a drive “SSD or HDD”) 1420such as a Solid State Disk (“SSD”) or a Hard Disk Drive (“HDD”), awireless local area network unit (“WLAN”) 1450, a Bluetooth unit 1452, aWireless Wide Area Network unit (“WWAN”) 1456, a Global PositioningSystem (GPS) 1455, a camera (“USB 3.0 camera”) 1454 such as a USB 3.0camera, or a Low Power Double Data Rate (“LPDDR”) memory unit (“LPDDR3”)1415 implemented in, for example, LPDDR3 standard. These components mayeach be implemented in any suitable manner.

In at least one embodiment, other components may be communicativelycoupled to processor 1410 through components discussed above. In atleast one embodiment, an accelerometer 1441, Ambient Light Sensor(“ALS”) 1442, compass 1443, and a gyroscope 1444 may be communicativelycoupled to sensor hub 1440. In at least one embodiment, thermal sensor1439, a fan 1437, a keyboard 1446, and a touch pad 1430 may becommunicatively coupled to EC 1435. In at least one embodiment, speaker1463, a headphones 1464, and a microphone (“mic”) 1465 may becommunicatively coupled to an audio unit (“audio codec and class d amp”)1464, which may in turn be communicatively coupled to DSP 1460. In atleast one embodiment, audio unit 1464 may include, for example andwithout limitation, an audio coder/decoder (“codec”) and a class Damplifier. In at least one embodiment, SIM card (“SIM”) 1457 may becommunicatively coupled to WWAN unit 1456. In at least one embodiment,components such as WLAN unit 1450 and Bluetooth unit 1452, as well asWWAN unit 1456 may be implemented in a Next Generation Form Factor(“NGFF”).

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in systemFIG. 14 for inferencing or predicting operations based, at least inpart, on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

FIG. 15 illustrates a computer system 1500, according to at least oneembodiment. In at least one embodiment, computer system 1500 isconfigured to implement various processes and methods describedthroughout this disclosure.

In at least one embodiment, computer system 1500 comprises, withoutlimitation, at least one central processing unit (“CPU”) 1502 that isconnected to a communication bus 1510 implemented using any suitableprotocol, such as PCI (“Peripheral Component Interconnect”), peripheralcomponent interconnect express (“PCI-Express”), AGP (“AcceleratedGraphics Port”), HyperTransport, or any other bus or point-to-pointcommunication protocol(s). In at least one embodiment, computer system1500 includes, without limitation, a main memory 1504 and control logic(e.g., implemented as hardware, software, or a combination thereof) anddata are stored in main memory 1504 which may take form of random accessmemory (“RAM”). In at least one embodiment, a network interfacesubsystem (“network interface”) 1522 provides an interface to othercomputing devices and networks for receiving data from and transmittingdata to other systems from computer system 1500.

In at least one embodiment, computer system 1500, in at least oneembodiment, includes, without limitation, input devices 1508, parallelprocessing system 1512, and display devices 1506 which can beimplemented using a conventional cathode ray tube (“CRT”), liquidcrystal display (“LCD”), light emitting diode (“LED”), plasma display,or other suitable display technologies. In at least one embodiment, userinput is received from input devices 1508 such as keyboard, mouse,touchpad, microphone, and more. In at least one embodiment, each offoregoing modules can be situated on a single semiconductor platform toform a processing system.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in systemFIG. 15 for inferencing or predicting operations based, at least inpart, on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

FIG. 16 illustrates a computer system 1600, according to at least oneembodiment. In at least one embodiment, computer system 1600 includes,without limitation, a computer 1610 and a USB stick 1620. In at leastone embodiment, computer 1610 may include, without limitation, anynumber and type of processor(s) (not shown) and a memory (not shown). Inat least one embodiment, computer 1610 includes, without limitation, aserver, a cloud instance, a laptop, and a desktop computer.

In at least one embodiment, USB stick 1620 includes, without limitation,a processing unit 1630, a USB interface 1640, and USB interface logic1650. In at least one embodiment, processing unit 1630 may be anyinstruction execution system, apparatus, or device capable of executinginstructions. In at least one embodiment, processing unit 1630 mayinclude, without limitation, any number and type of processing cores(not shown). In at least one embodiment, processing core 1630 comprisesan application specific integrated circuit (“ASIC”) that is optimized toperform any amount and type of operations associated with machinelearning. For instance, in at least one embodiment, processing core 1630is a tensor processing unit (“TPC”) that is optimized to perform machinelearning inference operations. In at least one embodiment, processingcore 1630 is a vision processing unit (“VPU”) that is optimized toperform machine vision and machine learning inference operations.

In at least one embodiment, USB interface 1640 may be any type of USBconnector or USB socket. For instance, in at least one embodiment, USBinterface 1640 is a USB 3.0 Type-C socket for data and power. In atleast one embodiment, USB interface 1640 is a USB 3.0 Type-A connector.In at least one embodiment, USB interface logic 1650 may include anyamount and type of logic that enables processing unit 1630 to interfacewith or devices (e.g., computer 1610) via USB connector 1640.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in systemFIG. 16 for inferencing or predicting operations based, at least inpart, on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

FIG. 17A illustrates an exemplary architecture in which a plurality ofGPUs 1710-1713 is communicatively coupled to a plurality of multi-coreprocessors 1705-1706 over high-speed links 1740-1743 (e.g., buses,point-to-point interconnects, etc.). In one embodiment, high-speed links1740-1743 support a communication throughput of 4 GB/s, 30 GB/s, 80 GB/sor higher. Various interconnect protocols may be used including, but notlimited to, PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 and NVLink 2.0.

In addition, and in one embodiment, two or more of GPUs 1710-1713 areinterconnected over high-speed links 1729-1730, which may be implementedusing same or different protocols/links than those used for high-speedlinks 1740-1743. Similarly, two or more of multi-core processors1705-1706 may be connected over high speed link 1728 which may besymmetric multi-processor (SMP) buses operating at 20 GB/s, 30 GB/s, 120GB/s or higher. Alternatively, all communication between various systemcomponents shown in FIG. 17A may be accomplished using sameprotocols/links (e.g., over a common interconnection fabric).

In one embodiment, each multi-core processor 1705-1706 iscommunicatively coupled to a processor memory 1701-1702, via memoryinterconnects 1726-1727, respectively, and each GPU 1710-1713 iscommunicatively coupled to GPU memory 1720-1723 over GPU memoryinterconnects 1750-1753, respectively. Memory interconnects 1726-1727and 1750-1753 may utilize same or different memory access technologies.By way of example, and not limitation, processor memories 1701-1702 andGPU memories 1720-1723 may be volatile memories such as dynamic randomaccess memories (DRAMs) (including stacked DRAMs), Graphics DDR SDRAM(GDDR) (e.g., GDDR5, GDDR6), or High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and/or maybe non-volatile memories such as 3D XPoint or Nano-Ram. In oneembodiment, some portion of processor memories 1701-1702 may be volatilememory and another portion may be non-volatile memory (e.g., using atwo-level memory (2LM) hierarchy).

As described herein, although various processors 1705-1706 and GPUs1710-1713 may be physically coupled to a particular memory 1701-1702,1720-1723, respectively, a unified memory architecture may beimplemented in which a same virtual system address space (also referredto as “effective address” space) is distributed among various physicalmemories. For example, processor memories 1701-1702 may each comprise 64GB of system memory address space and GPU memories 1720-1723 may eachcomprise 32 GB of system memory address space (resulting in a total of256 GB addressable memory in this example).

FIG. 17B illustrates additional details for an interconnection between amulti-core processor 1707 and a graphics acceleration module 1746 inaccordance with one exemplary embodiment. Graphics acceleration module1746 may include one or more GPU chips integrated on a line card whichis coupled to processor 1707 via high-speed link 1740. Alternatively,graphics acceleration module 1746 may be integrated on a same package orchip as processor 1707.

In at least one embodiment, illustrated processor 1707 includes aplurality of cores 1760A-1760D, each with a translation lookaside buffer1761A-1761D and one or more caches 1762A-1762D. In at least oneembodiment, cores 1760A-1760D may include various other components forexecuting instructions and processing data which are not illustrated.Caches 1762A-1762D may comprise level 1 (L1) and level 2 (L2) caches. Inaddition, one or more shared caches 1756 may be included in caches1762A-1762D and shared by sets of cores 1760A-1760D. For example, oneembodiment of processor 1707 includes 24 cores, each with its own L1cache, twelve shared L2 caches, and twelve shared L3 caches. In thisembodiment, one or more L2 and L3 caches are shared by two adjacentcores. Processor 1707 and graphics acceleration module 1746 connect withsystem memory 1714, which may include processor memories 1701-1702 ofFIG. 17A.

Coherency is maintained for data and instructions stored in variouscaches 1762A-1762D, 1756 and system memory 1714 via inter-corecommunication over a coherence bus 1764. For example, each cache mayhave cache coherency logic/circuitry associated therewith to communicateto over coherence bus 1764 in response to detected reads or writes toparticular cache lines. In one implementation, a cache snooping protocolis implemented over coherence bus 1764 to snoop cache accesses.

In one embodiment, a proxy circuit 1725 communicatively couples graphicsacceleration module 1746 to coherence bus 1764, allowing graphicsacceleration module 1746 to participate in a cache coherence protocol asa peer of cores 1760A-1760D. In particular, an interface 1735 providesconnectivity to proxy circuit 1725 over high-speed link 1740 (e.g., aPCIe bus, NVLink, etc.) and an interface 1737 connects graphicsacceleration module 1746 to link 1740.

In one implementation, an accelerator integration circuit 1736 providescache management, memory access, context management, and interruptmanagement services on behalf of a plurality of graphics processingengines 1731, 1732, N of graphics acceleration module 1746. Graphicsprocessing engines 1731, 1732, N may each comprise a separate graphicsprocessing unit (GPU). Alternatively, graphics processing engines 1731,1732, N may comprise different types of graphics processing engineswithin a GPU such as graphics execution units, media processing engines(e.g., video encoders/decoders), samplers, and blit engines. In at leastone embodiment, graphics acceleration module 1746 may be a GPU with aplurality of graphics processing engines 1731-1732, N or graphicsprocessing engines 1731-1732, N may be individual GPUs integrated on acommon package, line card, or chip.

In one embodiment, accelerator integration circuit 1736 includes amemory management unit (MMU) 1739 for performing various memorymanagement functions such as virtual-to-physical memory translations(also referred to as effective-to-real memory translations) and memoryaccess protocols for accessing system memory 1714. MMU 1739 may alsoinclude a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) (not shown) for cachingvirtual/effective to physical/real address translations. In oneimplementation, a cache 1738 stores commands and data for efficientaccess by graphics processing engines 1731-1732, N. In one embodiment,data stored in cache 1738 and graphics memories 1733-1734, M is keptcoherent with core caches 1762A-1762D, 1756 and system memory 1714. Asmentioned, this may be accomplished via proxy circuit 1725 on behalf ofcache 1738 and memories 1733-1734, M (e.g., sending updates to cache1738 related to modifications/accesses of cache lines on processorcaches 1762A-1762D, 1756 and receiving updates from cache 1738).

A set of registers 1745 store context data for threads executed bygraphics processing engines 1731-1732, N and a context managementcircuit 1748 manages thread contexts. For example, context managementcircuit 1748 may perform save and restore operations to save and restorecontexts of various threads during contexts switches (e.g., where afirst thread is saved and a second thread is stored so that a secondthread can be execute by a graphics processing engine). For example, ona context switch, context management circuit 1748 may store currentregister values to a designated region in memory (e.g., identified by acontext pointer). It may then restore register values when returning toa context. In one embodiment, an interrupt management circuit 1747receives and processes interrupts received from system devices.

In one implementation, virtual/effective addresses from a graphicsprocessing engine 1731 are translated to real/physical addresses insystem memory 1714 by MMU 1739. One embodiment of acceleratorintegration circuit 1736 supports multiple (e.g., 4, 8, 16) graphicsaccelerator modules 1746 and/or other accelerator devices. Graphicsaccelerator module 1746 may be dedicated to a single applicationexecuted on processor 1707 or may be shared between multipleapplications. In one embodiment, a virtualized graphics executionenvironment is presented in which resources of graphics processingengines 1731-1732, N are shared with multiple applications or virtualmachines (VMs). In at least one embodiment, resources may be subdividedinto “slices” which are allocated to different VMs and/or applicationsbased on processing requirements and priorities associated with VMsand/or applications.

In at least one embodiment, accelerator integration circuit 1736performs as a bridge to a system for graphics acceleration module 1746and provides address translation and system memory cache services. Inaddition, accelerator integration circuit 1736 may providevirtualization facilities for a host processor to manage virtualizationof graphics processing engines 1731-1732, interrupts, and memorymanagement.

Because hardware resources of graphics processing engines 1731-1732, Nare mapped explicitly to a real address space seen by host processor1707, any host processor can address these resources directly using aneffective address value. One function of accelerator integration circuit1736, in one embodiment, is physical separation of graphics processingengines 1731-1732, N so that they appear to a system as independentunits.

In at least one embodiment, one or more graphics memories 1733-1734, Mare coupled to each of graphics processing engines 1731-1732, N,respectively. Graphics memories 1733-1734, M store instructions and databeing processed by each of graphics processing engines 1731-1732, N.Graphics memories 1733-1734, M may be volatile memories such as DRAMs(including stacked DRAMs), GDDR memory (e.g., GDDR5, GDDR6), or HBM,and/or may be non-volatile memories such as 3D XPoint or Nano-Ram.

In one embodiment, to reduce data traffic over link 1740, biasingtechniques are used to ensure that data stored in graphics memories1733-1734, M is data which will be used most frequently by graphicsprocessing engines 1731-1732, N and preferably not used by cores1760A-1760D (at least not frequently). Similarly, a biasing mechanismattempts to keep data needed by cores (and preferably not graphicsprocessing engines 1731-1732, N) within caches 1762A-1762D, 1756 ofcores and system memory 1714.

FIG. 17C illustrates another exemplary embodiment in which acceleratorintegration circuit 1736 is integrated within processor 1707. In thisembodiment, graphics processing engines 1731-1732, N communicatedirectly over high-speed link 1740 to accelerator integration circuit1736 via interface 1737 and interface 1735 (which, again, may be utilizeany form of bus or interface protocol). Accelerator integration circuit1736 may perform same operations as those described with respect to FIG.17B, but potentially at a higher throughput given its close proximity tocoherence bus 1764 and caches 1762A-1762D, 1756. One embodiment supportsdifferent programming models including a dedicated-process programmingmodel (no graphics acceleration module virtualization) and sharedprogramming models (with virtualization), which may include programmingmodels which are controlled by accelerator integration circuit 1736 andprogramming models which are controlled by graphics acceleration module1746.

In at least one embodiment, graphics processing engines 1731-1732, N arededicated to a single application or process under a single operatingsystem. In at least one embodiment, a single application can funnelother application requests to graphics processing engines 1731-1732, N,providing virtualization within a VM/partition.

In at least one embodiment, graphics processing engines 1731-1732, N,may be shared by multiple VM/application partitions. In at least oneembodiment, shared models may use a system hypervisor to virtualizegraphics processing engines 1731-1732, N to allow access by eachoperating system. For single-partition systems without a hypervisor,graphics processing engines 1731-1732, N are owned by an operatingsystem. In at least one embodiment, an operating system can virtualizegraphics processing engines 1731-1732, N to provide access to eachprocess or application.

In at least one embodiment, graphics acceleration module 1746 or anindividual graphics processing engine 1731-1732, N selects a processelement using a process handle. In one embodiment, process elements arestored in system memory 1714 and are addressable using an effectiveaddress to real address translation techniques described herein. In atleast one embodiment, a process handle may be an implementation-specificvalue provided to a host process when registering its context withgraphics processing engine 1731-1732, N (that is, calling systemsoftware to add a process element to a process element linked list). Inat least one embodiment, a lower 16-bits of a process handle may be anoffset of the process element within a process element linked list.

FIG. 17D illustrates an exemplary accelerator integration slice 1790. Asused herein, a “slice” comprises a specified portion of processingresources of accelerator integration circuit 1736. Application effectiveaddress space 1782 within system memory 1714 stores process elements1783. In one embodiment, process elements 1783 are stored in response toGPU invocations 1781 from applications 1780 executed on processor 1707.A process element 1783 contains process state for correspondingapplication 1780. A work descriptor (WD) 1784 contained in processelement 1783 can be a single job requested by an application or maycontain a pointer to a queue of jobs. In at least one embodiment, WD1784 is a pointer to a job request queue in an application's addressspace 1782.

Graphics acceleration module 1746 and/or individual graphics processingengines 1731-1732, N can be shared by all or a subset of processes in asystem. In at least one embodiment, an infrastructure for setting upprocess state and sending a WD 1784 to a graphics acceleration module1746 to start a job in a virtualized environment may be included.

In at least one embodiment, a dedicated-process programming model isimplementation-specific. In this model, a single process owns graphicsacceleration module 1746 or an individual graphics processing engine1731. Because graphics acceleration module 1746 is owned by a singleprocess, a hypervisor initializes accelerator integration circuit 1736for an owning partition and an operating system initializes acceleratorintegration circuit 1736 for an owning process when graphicsacceleration module 1746 is assigned.

In operation, a WD fetch unit 1791 in accelerator integration slice 1790fetches next WD 1784 which includes an indication of work to be done byone or more graphics processing engines of graphics acceleration module1746. Data from WD 1784 may be stored in registers 1745 and used by MMU1739, interrupt management circuit 1747 and/or context managementcircuit 1748 as illustrated. For example, one embodiment of MMU 1739includes segment/page walk circuitry for accessing segment/page tables1786 within OS virtual address space 1785. Interrupt management circuit1747 may process interrupt events 1792 received from graphicsacceleration module 1746. When performing graphics operations, aneffective address 1793 generated by a graphics processing engine1731-1732, N is translated to a real address by MMU 1739.

In one embodiment, a same set of registers 1745 are duplicated for eachgraphics processing engine 1731-1732, N and/or graphics accelerationmodule 1746 and may be initialized by a hypervisor or operating system.Each of these duplicated registers may be included in an acceleratorintegration slice 1790. Exemplary registers that may be initialized by ahypervisor are shown in Table 1.

TABLE 1 Hypervisor Initialized Registers 1 Slice Control Register 2 RealAddress (RA) Scheduled Processes Area Pointer 3 Authority Mask OverrideRegister 4 Interrupt Vector Table Entry Offset 5 Interrupt Vector TableEntry Limit 6 State Register 7 Logical Partition ID 8 Real address (RA)Hypervisor Accelerator Utilization Record Pointer 9 Storage DescriptionRegister

Exemplary registers that may be initialized by an operating system areshown in Table 2.

TABLE 2 Operating System Initialized Registers 1 Process and ThreadIdentification 2 Effective Address (EA) Context Save/Restore Pointer 3Virtual Address (VA) Accelerator Utilization Record Pointer 4 VirtualAddress (VA) Storage Segment Table Pointer 5 Authority Mask 6 Workdescriptor

In one embodiment, each WD 1784 is specific to a particular graphicsacceleration module 1746 and/or graphics processing engines 1731-1732,N. It contains all information required by a graphics processing engine1731-1732, N to do work or it can be a pointer to a memory locationwhere an application has set up a command queue of work to be completed.

FIG. 17E illustrates additional details for one exemplary embodiment ofa shared model. This embodiment includes a hypervisor real address space1798 in which a process element list 1799 is stored. Hypervisor realaddress space 1798 is accessible via a hypervisor 1796 which virtualizesgraphics acceleration module engines for operating system 1795.

In at least one embodiment, shared programming models allow for all or asubset of processes from all or a subset of partitions in a system touse a graphics acceleration module 1746. There are two programmingmodels where graphics acceleration module 1746 is shared by multipleprocesses and partitions: time-sliced shared and graphics directedshared.

In this model, system hypervisor 1796 owns graphics acceleration module1746 and makes its function available to all operating systems 1795. Fora graphics acceleration module 1746 to support virtualization by systemhypervisor 1796, graphics acceleration module 1746 may adhere to thefollowing: 1) An application's job request must be autonomous (that is,state does not need to be maintained between jobs), or graphicsacceleration module 1746 must provide a context save and restoremechanism. 2) An application's job request is guaranteed by graphicsacceleration module 1746 to complete in a specified amount of time,including any translation faults, or graphics acceleration module 1746provides an ability to preempt processing of a job. 3) Graphicsacceleration module 1746 must be guaranteed fairness between processeswhen operating in a directed shared programming model.

In at least one embodiment, application 1780 is required to make anoperating system 1795 system call with a graphics acceleration module1746 type, a work descriptor (WD), an authority mask register (AMR)value, and a context save/restore area pointer (CSRP). In at least oneembodiment, graphics acceleration module 1746 type describes a targetedacceleration function for a system call. In at least one embodiment,graphics acceleration module 1746 type may be a system-specific value.In at least one embodiment, WD is formatted specifically for graphicsacceleration module 1746 and can be in a form of a graphics accelerationmodule 1746 command, an effective address pointer to a user-definedstructure, an effective address pointer to a queue of commands, or anyother data structure to describe work to be done by graphicsacceleration module 1746. In one embodiment, an AMR value is an AMRstate to use for a current process. In at least one embodiment, a valuepassed to an operating system is similar to an application setting anAMR. If accelerator integration circuit 1736 and graphics accelerationmodule 1746 implementations do not support a User Authority MaskOverride Register (UAMOR), an operating system may apply a current UAMORvalue to an AMR value before passing an AMR in a hypervisor call.Hypervisor 1796 may optionally apply a current Authority Mask OverrideRegister (AMOR) value before placing an AMR into process element 1783.In at least one embodiment, CSRP is one of registers 1745 containing aneffective address of an area in an application's address space 1782 forgraphics acceleration module 1746 to save and restore context state.This pointer is optional if no state is required to be saved betweenjobs or when a job is preempted. In at least one embodiment, contextsave/restore area may be pinned system memory.

Upon receiving a system call, operating system 1795 may verify thatapplication 1780 has registered and been given authority to use graphicsacceleration module 1746. Operating system 1795 then calls hypervisor1796 with information shown in Table 3.

TABLE 3 OS to Hypervisor Call Parameters 1 A work descriptor (WD) 2 AnAuthority Mask Register (AMR) value (potentially masked) 3 An effectiveaddress (EA) Context Save/Restore Area Pointer (CSRP) 4 A process ID(PID) and optional thread ID (TID) 5 A virtual address (VA) acceleratorutilization record pointer (AURP) 6 Virtual address of the storagesegment table pointer (SSTP) 7 A logical interrupt service number (LISN)

Upon receiving a hypervisor call, hypervisor 1796 verifies thatoperating system 1795 has registered and been given authority to usegraphics acceleration module 1746. Hypervisor 1796 then puts processelement 1783 into a process element linked list for a correspondinggraphics acceleration module 1746 type. A process element may includeinformation shown in Table 4.

TABLE 4 Process Element Information 1 A work descriptor (WD) 2 AnAuthority Mask Register (AMR) value (potentially masked). 3 An effectiveaddress (EA) Context Save/Restore Area Pointer (CSRP) 4 A process ID(PID) and optional thread ID (TID) 5 A virtual address (VA) acceleratorutilization record pointer (AURP) 6 Virtual address of the storagesegment table pointer (SSTP) 7 A logical interrupt service number (LISN)8 Interrupt vector table, derived from the hypervisor call parameters 9A state register (SR) value 10 A logical partition ID (LPID) 11 A realaddress (RA) hypervisor accelerator utilization record pointer 12Storage Descriptor Register (SDR)

In at least one embodiment, hypervisor initializes a plurality ofaccelerator integration slice 1790 registers 1745.

As illustrated in FIG. 17F, in at least one embodiment, a unified memoryis used, addressable via a common virtual memory address space used toaccess physical processor memories 1701-1702 and GPU memories 1720-1723.In this implementation, operations executed on GPUs 1710-1713 utilize asame virtual/effective memory address space to access processor memories1701-1702 and vice versa, thereby simplifying programmability. In oneembodiment, a first portion of a virtual/effective address space isallocated to processor memory 1701, a second portion to second processormemory 1702, a third portion to GPU memory 1720, and so on. In at leastone embodiment, an entire virtual/effective memory space (sometimesreferred to as an effective address space) is thereby distributed acrosseach of processor memories 1701-1702 and GPU memories 1720-1723,allowing any processor or GPU to access any physical memory with avirtual address mapped to that memory.

In one embodiment, bias/coherence management circuitry 1794A-1794Ewithin one or more of MMUs 1739A-1739E ensures cache coherence betweencaches of one or more host processors (e.g., 1705) and GPUs 1710-1713and implements biasing techniques indicating physical memories in whichcertain types of data should be stored. While multiple instances ofbias/coherence management circuitry 1794A-1794E are illustrated in FIG.17F, bias/coherence circuitry may be implemented within an MMU of one ormore host processors 1705 and/or within accelerator integration circuit1736.

One embodiment allows GPU-attached memory 1720-1723 to be mapped as partof system memory, and accessed using shared virtual memory (SVM)technology, but without suffering performance drawbacks associated withfull system cache coherence. In at least one embodiment, an ability forGPU-attached memory 1720-1723 to be accessed as system memory withoutonerous cache coherence overhead provides a beneficial operatingenvironment for GPU offload. This arrangement allows host processor 1705software to setup operands and access computation results, withoutoverhead of tradition I/O DMA data copies. Such traditional copiesinvolve driver calls, interrupts and memory mapped I/O (MMIO) accessesthat are all inefficient relative to simple memory accesses. In at leastone embodiment, an ability to access GPU attached memory 1720-1723without cache coherence overheads can be critical to execution time ofan offloaded computation. In cases with substantial streaming writememory traffic, for example, cache coherence overhead can significantlyreduce an effective write bandwidth seen by a GPU 1710-1713. In at leastone embodiment, efficiency of operand setup, efficiency of resultsaccess, and efficiency of GPU computation may play a role in determiningeffectiveness of a GPU offload.

In at least one embodiment, selection of GPU bias and host processorbias is driven by a bias tracker data structure. A bias table may beused, for example, which may be a page-granular structure (i.e.,controlled at a granularity of a memory page) that includes 1 or 2 bitsper GPU-attached memory page. In at least one embodiment, a bias tablemay be implemented in a stolen memory range of one or more GPU-attachedmemories 1720-1723, with or without a bias cache in GPU 1710-1713 (e.g.,to cache frequently/recently used entries of a bias table).Alternatively, an entire bias table may be maintained within a GPU.

In at least one embodiment, a bias table entry associated with eachaccess to GPU-attached memory 1720-1723 is accessed prior to actualaccess to a GPU memory, causing the following operations. First, localrequests from GPU 1710-1713 that find their page in GPU bias areforwarded directly to a corresponding GPU memory 1720-1723. Localrequests from a GPU that find their page in host bias are forwarded toprocessor 1705 (e.g., over a high-speed link as discussed above). In oneembodiment, requests from processor 1705 that find a requested page inhost processor bias complete a request like a normal memory read.Alternatively, requests directed to a GPU-biased page may be forwardedto GPU 1710-1713. In at least one embodiment, a GPU may then transitiona page to a host processor bias if it is not currently using a page. Inat least one embodiment, bias state of a page can be changed either by asoftware-based mechanism, a hardware-assisted software-based mechanism,or, for a limited set of cases, a purely hardware-based mechanism.

One mechanism for changing bias state employs an API call (e.g. OpenCL),which, in turn, calls a GPU's device driver which, in turn, sends amessage (or enqueues a command descriptor) to a GPU directing it tochange a bias state and, for some transitions, perform a cache flushingoperation in a host. In at least one embodiment, cache flushingoperation is used for a transition from host processor 1705 bias to GPUbias, but is not for an opposite transition.

In one embodiment, cache coherency is maintained by temporarilyrendering GPU-biased pages uncacheable by host processor 1705. To accessthese pages, processor 1705 may request access from GPU 1710 which mayor may not grant access right away. Thus, to reduce communicationbetween processor 1705 and GPU 1710 it is beneficial to ensure thatGPU-biased pages are those which are required by a GPU but not hostprocessor 1705 and vice versa.

Hardware structure(s) 915 are used to perform one or more embodiments.Details regarding the hardware structure(x) 915 are provided herein inconjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B.

FIG. 18 illustrates exemplary integrated circuits and associatedgraphics processors that may be fabricated using one or more IP cores,according to various embodiments described herein. In addition to whatis illustrated, other logic and circuits may be included in at least oneembodiment, including additional graphics processors/cores, peripheralinterface controllers, or general-purpose processor cores.

FIG. 18 is a block diagram illustrating an exemplary system on a chipintegrated circuit 1800 that may be fabricated using one or more IPcores, according to at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment,integrated circuit 1800 includes one or more application processor(s)1805 (e.g., CPUs), at least one graphics processor 1810, and mayadditionally include an image processor 1815 and/or a video processor1820, any of which may be a modular IP core. In at least one embodiment,integrated circuit 1800 includes peripheral or bus logic including a USBcontroller 1825, UART controller 1830, an SPI/SDIO controller 1835, andan I.sup.2S/I.sup.2C controller 1840. In at least one embodiment,integrated circuit 1800 can include a display device 1845 coupled to oneor more of a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) controller 1850and a mobile industry processor interface (MIPI) display interface 1855.In at least one embodiment, storage may be provided by a flash memorysubsystem 1860 including flash memory and a flash memory controller. Inat least one embodiment, memory interface may be provided via a memorycontroller 1865 for access to SDRAM or SRAM memory devices. In at leastone embodiment, some integrated circuits additionally include anembedded security engine 1870.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used inintegrated circuit 1800 for inferencing or predicting operations based,at least in part, on weight parameters calculated using neural networktraining operations, neural network functions and/or architectures, orneural network use cases described herein.

FIGS. 19A-19B illustrate exemplary integrated circuits and associatedgraphics processors that may be fabricated using one or more IP cores,according to various embodiments described herein. In addition to whatis illustrated, other logic and circuits may be included in at least oneembodiment, including additional graphics processors/cores, peripheralinterface controllers, or general-purpose processor cores.

FIGS. 19A-19B are block diagrams illustrating exemplary graphicsprocessors for use within a SoC, according to embodiments describedherein. FIG. 19A illustrates an exemplary graphics processor 1910 of asystem on a chip integrated circuit that may be fabricated using one ormore IP cores, according to at least one embodiment. FIG. 19Billustrates an additional exemplary graphics processor 1940 of a systemon a chip integrated circuit that may be fabricated using one or more IPcores, according to at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment,graphics processor 1910 of FIG. 19A is a low power graphics processorcore. In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 1940 of FIG. 19B isa higher performance graphics processor core. In at least oneembodiment, each of graphics processors 1910, 1940 can be variants ofgraphics processor 1810 of FIG. 18 .

In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 1910 includes a vertexprocessor 1905 and one or more fragment processor(s) 1915A-1915N (e.g.,1915A, 1915B, 1915C, 1915D, through 1915N-1, and 1915N). In at least oneembodiment, graphics processor 1910 can execute different shaderprograms via separate logic, such that vertex processor 1905 isoptimized to execute operations for vertex shader programs, while one ormore fragment processor(s) 1915A-1915N execute fragment (e.g., pixel)shading operations for fragment or pixel shader programs. In at leastone embodiment, vertex processor 1905 performs a vertex processing stageof a 3D graphics pipeline and generates primitives and vertex data. Inat least one embodiment, fragment processor(s) 1915A-1915N use primitiveand vertex data generated by vertex processor 1905 to produce aframebuffer that is displayed on a display device. In at least oneembodiment, fragment processor(s) 1915A-1915N are optimized to executefragment shader programs as provided for in an OpenGL API, which may beused to perform similar operations as a pixel shader program as providedfor in a Direct 3D API.

In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 1910 additionallyincludes one or more memory management units (MMUs) 1920A-1920B,cache(s) 1925A-1925B, and circuit interconnect(s) 1930A-1930B. In atleast one embodiment, one or more MMU(s) 1920A-1920B provide for virtualto physical address mapping for graphics processor 1910, including forvertex processor 1905 and/or fragment processor(s) 1915A-1915N, whichmay reference vertex or image/texture data stored in memory, in additionto vertex or image/texture data stored in one or more cache(s)1925A-1925B. In at least one embodiment, one or more MMU(s) 1920A-1920Bmay be synchronized with other MMUs within system, including one or moreMMUs associated with one or more application processor(s) 1805, imageprocessors 1815, and/or video processors 1820 of FIG. 18 , such thateach processor 1805-1820 can participate in a shared or unified virtualmemory system. In at least one embodiment, one or more circuitinterconnect(s) 1930A-1930B enable graphics processor 1910 to interfacewith other IP cores within SoC, either via an internal bus of SoC or viaa direct connection.

In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 1940 includes one or moreMMU(s) 1920A-1920B, caches 1925A-1925B, and circuit interconnects1930A-1930B of graphics processor 1910 of FIG. 19A. In at least oneembodiment, graphics processor 1940 includes one or more shader core(s)1955A-1955N (e.g., 1955A, 1955B, 1955C, 1955D, 1955E, 1955F, through1955N-1, and 1955N), which provides for a unified shader corearchitecture in which a single core or type or core can execute alltypes of programmable shader code, including shader program code toimplement vertex shaders, fragment shaders, and/or compute shaders. Inat least one embodiment, a number of shader cores can vary. In at leastone embodiment, graphics processor 1940 includes an inter-core taskmanager 1945, which acts as a thread dispatcher to dispatch executionthreads to one or more shader cores 1955A-1955N and a tiling unit 1958to accelerate tiling operations for tile-based rendering, in whichrendering operations for a scene are subdivided in image space, forexample to exploit local spatial coherence within a scene or to optimizeuse of internal caches.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used inintegrated circuit 19A and/or 19B for inferencing or predictingoperations based, at least in part, on weight parameters calculatedusing neural network training operations, neural network functionsand/or architectures, or neural network use cases described herein.

FIGS. 20A-20B illustrate additional exemplary graphics processor logicaccording to embodiments described herein. FIG. 20A illustrates agraphics core 2000 that may be included within graphics processor 1810of FIG. 18 , in at least one embodiment, and may be a unified shadercore 1955A-1955N as in FIG. 19B in at least one embodiment. FIG. 20Billustrates a highly-parallel general-purpose graphics processing unit2030 suitable for deployment on a multi-chip module in at least oneembodiment.

In at least one embodiment, graphics core 2000 includes a sharedinstruction cache 2002, a texture unit 2018, and a cache/shared memory2020 that are common to execution resources within graphics core 2000.In at least one embodiment, graphics core 2000 can include multipleslices 2001A-2001N or partition for each core, and a graphics processorcan include multiple instances of graphics core 2000. Slices 2001A-2001Ncan include support logic including a local instruction cache2004A-2004N, a thread scheduler 2006A-2006N, a thread dispatcher2008A-2008N, and a set of registers 2010A-2010N. In at least oneembodiment, slices 2001A-2001N can include a set of additional functionunits (AFUs 2012A-2012N), floating-point units (FPU 2014A-2014N),integer arithmetic logic units (ALUs 2016-2016N), address computationalunits (ACU 2013A-2013N), double-precision floating-point units (DPFPU2015A-2015N), and matrix processing units (MPU 2017A-2017N).

In at least one embodiment, FPUs 2014A-2014N can performsingle-precision (32-bit) and half-precision (16-bit) floating pointoperations, while DPFPUs 2015A-2015N perform double precision (64-bit)floating point operations. In at least one embodiment, ALUs 2016A-2016Ncan perform variable precision integer operations at 8-bit, 16-bit, and32-bit precision, and can be configured for mixed precision operations.In at least one embodiment, MPUs 2017A-2017N can also be configured formixed precision matrix operations, including half-precision floatingpoint and 8-bit integer operations. In at least one embodiment, MPUs2017-2017N can perform a variety of matrix operations to acceleratemachine learning application frameworks, including enabling support foraccelerated general matrix to matrix multiplication (GEMM). In at leastone embodiment, AFUs 2012A-2012N can perform additional logic operationsnot supported by floating-point or integer units, includingtrigonometric operations (e.g., Sine, Cosine, etc.).

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in graphicscore 2000 for inferencing or predicting operations based, at least inpart, on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

FIG. 20B illustrates a general-purpose processing unit (GPGPU) 2030 thatcan be configured to enable highly-parallel compute operations to beperformed by an array of graphics processing units, in at least oneembodiment. In at least one embodiment, GPGPU 2030 can be linkeddirectly to other instances of GPGPU 2030 to create a multi-GPU clusterto improve training speed for deep neural networks. In at least oneembodiment, GPGPU 2030 includes a host interface 2032 to enable aconnection with a host processor. In at least one embodiment, hostinterface 2032 is a PCI Express interface. In at least one embodiment,host interface 2032 can be a vendor specific communications interface orcommunications fabric. In at least one embodiment, GPGPU 2030 receivescommands from a host processor and uses a global scheduler 2034 todistribute execution threads associated with those commands to a set ofcompute clusters 2036A-2036H. In at least one embodiment, computeclusters 2036A-2036H share a cache memory 2038. In at least oneembodiment, cache memory 2038 can serve as a higher-level cache forcache memories within compute clusters 2036A-2036H.

In at least one embodiment, GPGPU 2030 includes memory 2044A-2044Bcoupled with compute clusters 2036A-2036H via a set of memorycontrollers 2042A-2042B. In at least one embodiment, memory 2044A-2044Bcan include various types of memory devices including dynamic randomaccess memory (DRAM) or graphics random access memory, such assynchronous graphics random access memory (SGRAM), including graphicsdouble data rate (GDDR) memory.

In at least one embodiment, compute clusters 2036A-2036H each include aset of graphics cores, such as graphics core 2000 of FIG. 20A, which caninclude multiple types of integer and floating point logic units thatcan perform computational operations at a range of precisions includingsuited for machine learning computations. For example, in at least oneembodiment, at least a subset of floating point units in each of computeclusters 2036A-2036H can be configured to perform 16-bit or 32-bitfloating point operations, while a different subset of floating pointunits can be configured to perform 64-bit floating point operations.

In at least one embodiment, multiple instances of GPGPU 2030 can beconfigured to operate as a compute cluster. In at least one embodiment,communication used by compute clusters 2036A-2036H for synchronizationand data exchange varies across embodiments. In at least one embodiment,multiple instances of GPGPU 2030 communicate over host interface 2032.In at least one embodiment, GPGPU 2030 includes an I/O hub 2039 thatcouples GPGPU 2030 with a GPU link 2040 that enables a direct connectionto other instances of GPGPU 2030. In at least one embodiment, GPU link2040 is coupled to a dedicated GPU-to-GPU bridge that enablescommunication and synchronization between multiple instances of GPGPU2030. In at least one embodiment GPU link 2040 couples with a high speedinterconnect to transmit and receive data to other GPGPUs or parallelprocessors. In at least one embodiment, multiple instances of GPGPU 2030are located in separate data processing systems and communicate via anetwork device that is accessible via host interface 2032. In at leastone embodiment GPU link 2040 can be configured to enable a connection toa host processor in addition to or as an alternative to host interface2032.

In at least one embodiment, GPGPU 2030 can be configured to train neuralnetworks. In at least one embodiment, GPGPU 2030 can be used within ainferencing platform. In at least one embodiment, in which GPGPU 2030 isused for inferencing, GPGPU may include fewer compute clusters2036A-2036H relative to when GPGPU is used for training a neuralnetwork. In at least one embodiment, memory technology associated withmemory 2044A-2044B may differ between inferencing and trainingconfigurations, with higher bandwidth memory technologies devoted totraining configurations. In at least one embodiment, inferencingconfiguration of GPGPU 2030 can support inferencing specificinstructions. For example, in at least one embodiment, an inferencingconfiguration can provide support for one or more 8-bit integer dotproduct instructions, which may be used during inferencing operationsfor deployed neural networks.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in GPGPU2030 for inferencing or predicting operations based, at least in part,on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

FIG. 21 is a block diagram illustrating a computing system 2100according to at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment,computing system 2100 includes a processing subsystem 2101 having one ormore processor(s) 2102 and a system memory 2104 communicating via aninterconnection path that may include a memory hub 2105. In at least oneembodiment, memory hub 2105 may be a separate component within a chipsetcomponent or may be integrated within one or more processor(s) 2102. Inat least one embodiment, memory hub 2105 couples with an I/O subsystem2111 via a communication link 2106. In at least one embodiment, I/Osubsystem 2111 includes an I/O hub 2107 that can enable computing system2100 to receive input from one or more input device(s) 2108. In at leastone embodiment, I/O hub 2107 can enable a display controller, which maybe included in one or more processor(s) 2102, to provide outputs to oneor more display device(s) 2110A. In at least one embodiment, one or moredisplay device(s) 2110A coupled with I/O hub 2107 can include a local,internal, or embedded display device.

In at least one embodiment, processing subsystem 2101 includes one ormore parallel processor(s) 2112 coupled to memory hub 2105 via a bus orother communication link 2113. In at least one embodiment, communicationlink 2113 may be one of any number of standards based communication linktechnologies or protocols, such as, but not limited to PCI Express, ormay be a vendor specific communications interface or communicationsfabric. In at least one embodiment, one or more parallel processor(s)2112 form a computationally focused parallel or vector processing systemthat can include a large number of processing cores and/or processingclusters, such as a many integrated core (MIC) processor. In at leastone embodiment, one or more parallel processor(s) 2112 form a graphicsprocessing subsystem that can output pixels to one of one or moredisplay device(s) 2110A coupled via I/O hub 2107. In at least oneembodiment, one or more parallel processor(s) 2112 can also include adisplay controller and display interface (not shown) to enable a directconnection to one or more display device(s) 2110B.

In at least one embodiment, a system storage unit 2114 can connect toI/O hub 2107 to provide a storage mechanism for computing system 2100.In at least one embodiment, an I/O switch 2116 can be used to provide aninterface mechanism to enable connections between I/O hub 2107 and othercomponents, such as a network adapter 2118 and/or wireless networkadapter 2119 that may be integrated into platform, and various otherdevices that can be added via one or more add-in device(s) 2120. In atleast one embodiment, network adapter 2118 can be an Ethernet adapter oranother wired network adapter. In at least one embodiment, wirelessnetwork adapter 2119 can include one or more of a Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, nearfield communication (NFC), or other network device that includes one ormore wireless radios.

In at least one embodiment, computing system 2100 can include othercomponents not explicitly shown, including USB or other portconnections, optical storage drives, video capture devices, and like,may also be connected to I/O hub 2107. In at least one embodiment,communication paths interconnecting various components in FIG. 21 may beimplemented using any suitable protocols, such as PCI (PeripheralComponent Interconnect) based protocols (e.g., PCI-Express), or otherbus or point-to-point communication interfaces and/or protocol(s), suchas NV-Link high-speed interconnect, or interconnect protocols.

In at least one embodiment, one or more parallel processor(s) 2112incorporate circuitry optimized for graphics and video processing,including, for example, video output circuitry, and constitutes agraphics processing unit (GPU). In at least one embodiment, one or moreparallel processor(s) 2112 incorporate circuitry optimized for generalpurpose processing. In at least embodiment, components of computingsystem 2100 may be integrated with one or more other system elements ona single integrated circuit. For example, in at least one embodiment,one or more parallel processor(s) 2112, memory hub 2105, processor(s)2102, and I/O hub 2107 can be integrated into a system on chip (SoC)integrated circuit. In at least one embodiment, components of computingsystem 2100 can be integrated into a single package to form a system inpackage (SIP) configuration. In at least one embodiment, at least aportion of components of computing system 2100 can be integrated into amulti-chip module (MCM), which can be interconnected with othermulti-chip modules into a modular computing system.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in systemFIG. 2100 for inferencing or predicting operations based, at least inpart, on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

Processors

FIG. 22A illustrates a parallel processor 2200 according to at least onembodiment. In at least one embodiment, various components of parallelprocessor 2200 may be implemented using one or more integrated circuitdevices, such as programmable processors, application specificintegrated circuits (ASICs), or field programmable gate arrays (FPGA).In at least one embodiment, illustrated parallel processor 2200 is avariant of one or more parallel processor(s) 2112 shown in FIG. 21according to an exemplary embodiment.

In at least one embodiment, parallel processor 2200 includes a parallelprocessing unit 2202. In at least one embodiment, parallel processingunit 2202 includes an I/O unit 2204 that enables communication withother devices, including other instances of parallel processing unit2202. In at least one embodiment, I/O unit 2204 may be directlyconnected to other devices. In at least one embodiment, I/O unit 2204connects with other devices via use of a hub or switch interface, suchas memory hub 2105. In at least one embodiment, connections betweenmemory hub 2105 and I/O unit 2204 form a communication link 2113. In atleast one embodiment, I/O unit 2204 connects with a host interface 2206and a memory crossbar 2216, where host interface 2206 receives commandsdirected to performing processing operations and memory crossbar 2216receives commands directed to performing memory operations.

In at least one embodiment, when host interface 2206 receives a commandbuffer via I/O unit 2204, host interface 2206 can direct work operationsto perform those commands to a front end 2208. In at least oneembodiment, front end 2208 couples with a scheduler 2210, which isconfigured to distribute commands or other work items to a processingcluster array 2212. In at least one embodiment, scheduler 2210 ensuresthat processing cluster array 2212 is properly configured and in a validstate before tasks are distributed to processing cluster array 2212 ofprocessing cluster array 2212. In at least one embodiment, scheduler2210 is implemented via firmware logic executing on a microcontroller.In at least one embodiment, microcontroller implemented scheduler 2210is configurable to perform complex scheduling and work distributionoperations at coarse and fine granularity, enabling rapid preemption andcontext switching of threads executing on processing array 2212. In atleast one embodiment, host software can prove workloads for schedulingon processing array 2212 via one of multiple graphics processingdoorbells. In at least one embodiment, workloads can then beautomatically distributed across processing array 2212 by scheduler 2210logic within a microcontroller including scheduler 2210.

In at least one embodiment, processing cluster array 2212 can include upto “N” processing clusters (e.g., cluster 2214A, cluster 2214B, throughcluster 2214N). In at least one embodiment, each cluster 2214A-2214N ofprocessing cluster array 2212 can execute a large number of concurrentthreads. In at least one embodiment, scheduler 2210 can allocate work toclusters 2214A-2214N of processing cluster array 2212 using variousscheduling and/or work distribution algorithms, which may vary dependingon workload arising for each type of program or computation. In at leastone embodiment, scheduling can be handled dynamically by scheduler 2210,or can be assisted in part by compiler logic during compilation ofprogram logic configured for execution by processing cluster array 2212.In at least one embodiment, different clusters 2214A-2214N of processingcluster array 2212 can be allocated for processing different types ofprograms or for performing different types of computations.

In at least one embodiment, processing cluster array 2212 can beconfigured to perform various types of parallel processing operations.In at least one embodiment, processing cluster array 2212 is configuredto perform general-purpose parallel compute operations. For example, inat least one embodiment, processing cluster array 2212 can include logicto execute processing tasks including filtering of video and/or audiodata, performing modeling operations, including physics operations, andperforming data transformations.

In at least one embodiment, processing cluster array 2212 is configuredto perform parallel graphics processing operations. In at least oneembodiment, processing cluster array 2212 can include additional logicto support execution of such graphics processing operations, including,but not limited to texture sampling logic to perform texture operations,as well as tessellation logic and other vertex processing logic. In atleast one embodiment, processing cluster array 2212 can be configured toexecute graphics processing related shader programs such as, but notlimited to vertex shaders, tessellation shaders, geometry shaders, andpixel shaders. In at least one embodiment, parallel processing unit 2202can transfer data from system memory via I/O unit 2204 for processing.In at least one embodiment, during processing, transferred data can bestored to on-chip memory (e.g., parallel processor memory 2222) duringprocessing, then written back to system memory.

In at least one embodiment, when parallel processing unit 2202 is usedto perform graphics processing, scheduler 2210 can be configured todivide a processing workload into approximately equal sized tasks, tobetter enable distribution of graphics processing operations to multipleclusters 2214A-2214N of processing cluster array 2212. In at least oneembodiment, portions of processing cluster array 2212 can be configuredto perform different types of processing. For example, in at least oneembodiment, a first portion may be configured to perform vertex shadingand topology generation, a second portion may be configured to performtessellation and geometry shading, and a third portion may be configuredto perform pixel shading or other screen space operations, to produce arendered image for display. In at least one embodiment, intermediatedata produced by one or more of clusters 2214A-2214N may be stored inbuffers to allow intermediate data to be transmitted between clusters2214A-2214N for further processing.

In at least one embodiment, processing cluster array 2212 can receiveprocessing tasks to be executed via scheduler 2210, which receivescommands defining processing tasks from front end 2208. In at least oneembodiment, processing tasks can include indices of data to beprocessed, e.g., surface (patch) data, primitive data, vertex data,and/or pixel data, as well as state parameters and commands defining howdata is to be processed (e.g., what program is to be executed). In atleast one embodiment, scheduler 2210 may be configured to fetch indicescorresponding to tasks or may receive indices from front end 2208. In atleast one embodiment, front end 2208 can be configured to ensureprocessing cluster array 2212 is configured to a valid state before aworkload specified by incoming command buffers (e.g., batch-buffers,push buffers, etc.) is initiated.

In at least one embodiment, each of one or more instances of parallelprocessing unit 2202 can couple with parallel processor memory 2222. Inat least one embodiment, parallel processor memory 2222 can be accessedvia memory crossbar 2216, which can receive memory requests fromprocessing cluster array 2212 as well as I/O unit 2204. In at least oneembodiment, memory crossbar 2216 can access parallel processor memory2222 via a memory interface 2218. In at least one embodiment, memoryinterface 2218 can include multiple partition units (e.g., partitionunit 2220A, partition unit 2220B, through partition unit 2220N) that caneach couple to a portion (e.g., memory unit) of parallel processormemory 2222. In at least one embodiment, a number of partition units2220A-2220N is configured to be equal to a number of memory units, suchthat a first partition unit 2220A has a corresponding first memory unit2224A, a second partition unit 2220B has a corresponding memory unit2224B, and an Nth partition unit 2220N has a corresponding Nth memoryunit 2224N. In at least one embodiment, a number of partition units2220A-2220N may not be equal to a number of memory devices.

In at least one embodiment, memory units 2224A-2224N can include varioustypes of memory devices, including dynamic random access memory (DRAM)or graphics random access memory, such as synchronous graphics randomaccess memory (SGRAM), including graphics double data rate (GDDR)memory. In at least one embodiment, memory units 2224A-2224N may alsoinclude 3D stacked memory, including but not limited to high bandwidthmemory (HBM). In at least one embodiment, render targets, such as framebuffers or texture maps may be stored across memory units 2224A-2224N,allowing partition units 2220A-2220N to write portions of each rendertarget in parallel to efficiently use available bandwidth of parallelprocessor memory 2222. In at least one embodiment, a local instance ofparallel processor memory 2222 may be excluded in favor of a unifiedmemory design that utilizes system memory in conjunction with localcache memory.

In at least one embodiment, any one of clusters 2214A-2214N ofprocessing cluster array 2212 can process data that will be written toany of memory units 2224A-2224N within parallel processor memory 2222.In at least one embodiment, memory crossbar 2216 can be configured totransfer an output of each cluster 2214A-2214N to any partition unit2220A-2220N or to another cluster 2214A-2214N, which can performadditional processing operations on an output. In at least oneembodiment, each cluster 2214A-2214N can communicate with memoryinterface 2218 through memory crossbar 2216 to read from or write tovarious external memory devices. In at least one embodiment, memorycrossbar 2216 has a connection to memory interface 2218 to communicatewith I/O unit 2204, as well as a connection to a local instance ofparallel processor memory 2222, enabling processing units withindifferent processing clusters 2214A-2214N to communicate with systemmemory or other memory that is not local to parallel processing unit2202. In at least one embodiment, memory crossbar 2216 can use virtualchannels to separate traffic streams between clusters 2214A-2214N andpartition units 2220A-2220N.

In at least one embodiment, multiple instances of parallel processingunit 2202 can be provided on a single add-in card, or multiple add-incards can be interconnected. In at least one embodiment, differentinstances of parallel processing unit 2202 can be configured tointer-operate even if different instances have different numbers ofprocessing cores, different amounts of local parallel processor memory,and/or other configuration differences. For example, in at least oneembodiment, some instances of parallel processing unit 2202 can includehigher precision floating point units relative to other instances. In atleast one embodiment, systems incorporating one or more instances ofparallel processing unit 2202 or parallel processor 2200 can beimplemented in a variety of configurations and form factors, includingbut not limited to desktop, laptop, or handheld personal computers,servers, workstations, game consoles, and/or embedded systems.

FIG. 22B is a block diagram of a partition unit 2220 according to atleast one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, partition unit 2220 isan instance of one of partition units 2220A-2220N of FIG. 22A. In atleast one embodiment, partition unit 2220 includes an L2 cache 2221, aframe buffer interface 2225, and a ROP 2226 (raster operations unit). L2cache 2221 is a read/write cache that is configured to perform load andstore operations received from memory crossbar 2216 and ROP 2226. In atleast one embodiment, read misses and urgent write-back requests areoutput by L2 cache 2221 to frame buffer interface 2225 for processing.In at least one embodiment, updates can also be sent to a frame buffervia frame buffer interface 2225 for processing. In at least oneembodiment, frame buffer interface 2225 interfaces with one of memoryunits in parallel processor memory, such as memory units 2224A-2224N ofFIG. 22 (e.g., within parallel processor memory 2222).

In at least one embodiment, ROP 2226 is a processing unit that performsraster operations such as stencil, z test, blending, and like. In atleast one embodiment, ROP 2226 then outputs processed graphics data thatis stored in graphics memory. In at least one embodiment, ROP 2226includes compression logic to compress depth or color data that iswritten to memory and decompress depth or color data that is read frommemory. In at least one embodiment, compression logic can be losslesscompression logic that makes use of one or more of multiple compressionalgorithms. Type of compression that is performed by ROP 2226 can varybased on statistical characteristics of data to be compressed. Forexample, in at least one embodiment, delta color compression isperformed on depth and color data on a per-tile basis.

In In at least one embodiment, ROP 2226 is included within eachprocessing cluster (e.g., cluster 2214A-2214N of FIG. 22 ) instead ofwithin partition unit 2220. In at least one embodiment, read and writerequests for pixel data are transmitted over memory crossbar 2216instead of pixel fragment data. In at least one embodiment, processedgraphics data may be displayed on a display device, such as one of oneor more display device(s) 2110 of FIG. 21 , routed for furtherprocessing by processor(s) 2102, or routed for further processing by oneof processing entities within parallel processor 2200 of FIG. 22A.

FIG. 22C is a block diagram of a processing cluster 2214 within aparallel processing unit according to at least one embodiment. In atleast one embodiment, a processing cluster is an instance of one ofprocessing clusters 2214A-2214N of FIG. 22 . In at least one embodiment,processing cluster 2214 can be configured to execute many threads inparallel, where term “thread” refers to an instance of a particularprogram executing on a particular set of input data. In at least oneembodiment, single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) instruction issuetechniques are used to support parallel execution of a large number ofthreads without providing multiple independent instruction units. In atleast one embodiment, single-instruction, multiple-thread (SIMT)techniques are used to support parallel execution of a large number ofgenerally synchronized threads, using a common instruction unitconfigured to issue instructions to a set of processing engines withineach one of processing clusters.

In at least one embodiment, operation of processing cluster 2214 can becontrolled via a pipeline manager 2232 that distributes processing tasksto SIMT parallel processors. In at least one embodiment, pipelinemanager 2232 receives instructions from scheduler 2210 of FIG. 22 andmanages execution of those instructions via a graphics multiprocessor2234 and/or a texture unit 2236. In at least one embodiment, graphicsmultiprocessor 2234 is an exemplary instance of a SIMT parallelprocessor. However, in at least one embodiment, various types of SIMTparallel processors of differing architectures may be included withinprocessing cluster 2214. In at least one embodiment, one or moreinstances of graphics multiprocessor 2234 can be included within aprocessing cluster 2214. In at least one embodiment, graphicsmultiprocessor 2234 can process data and a data crossbar 2240 can beused to distribute processed data to one of multiple possibledestinations, including other shader units. In at least one embodiment,pipeline manager 2232 can facilitate distribution of processed data byspecifying destinations for processed data to be distributed vis datacrossbar 2240.

In at least one embodiment, each graphics multiprocessor 2234 withinprocessing cluster 2214 can include an identical set of functionalexecution logic (e.g., arithmetic logic units, load-store units, etc.).In at least one embodiment, functional execution logic can be configuredin a pipelined manner in which new instructions can be issued beforeprevious instructions are complete. In at least one embodiment,functional execution logic supports a variety of operations includinginteger and floating point arithmetic, comparison operations, Booleanoperations, bit-shifting, and computation of various algebraicfunctions. In at least one embodiment, same functional-unit hardware canbe leveraged to perform different operations and any combination offunctional units may be present.

In at least one embodiment, instructions transmitted to processingcluster 2214 constitute a thread. In at least one embodiment, a set ofthreads executing across a set of parallel processing engines is athread group. In at least one embodiment, thread group executes aprogram on different input data. In at least one embodiment, each threadwithin a thread group can be assigned to a different processing enginewithin a graphics multiprocessor 2234. In at least one embodiment, athread group may include fewer threads than a number of processingengines within graphics multiprocessor 2234. In at least one embodiment,when a thread group includes fewer threads than a number of processingengines, one or more of processing engines may be idle during cycles inwhich that thread group is being processed. In at least one embodiment,a thread group may also include more threads than a number of processingengines within graphics multiprocessor 2234. In at least one embodiment,when a thread group includes more threads than number of processingengines within graphics multiprocessor 2234, processing can be performedover consecutive clock cycles. In at least one embodiment, multiplethread groups can be executed concurrently on a graphics multiprocessor2234.

In at least one embodiment, graphics multiprocessor 2234 includes aninternal cache memory to perform load and store operations. In at leastone embodiment, graphics multiprocessor 2234 can forego an internalcache and use a cache memory (e.g., L1 cache 2248) within processingcluster 2214. In at least one embodiment, each graphics multiprocessor2234 also has access to L2 caches within partition units (e.g.,partition units 2220A-2220N of FIG. 22 ) that are shared among allprocessing clusters 2214 and may be used to transfer data betweenthreads. In at least one embodiment, graphics multiprocessor 2234 mayalso access off-chip global memory, which can include one or more oflocal parallel processor memory and/or system memory. In at least oneembodiment, any memory external to parallel processing unit 2202 may beused as global memory. In at least one embodiment, processing cluster2214 includes multiple instances of graphics multiprocessor 2234 canshare common instructions and data, which may be stored in L1 cache2248.

In at least one embodiment, each processing cluster 2214 may include anMMU 2245 (memory management unit) that is configured to map virtualaddresses into physical addresses. In at least one embodiment, one ormore instances of MMU 2245 may reside within memory interface 2218 ofFIG. 22 . In at least one embodiment, MMU 2245 includes a set of pagetable entries (PTEs) used to map a virtual address to a physical addressof a tile (talk more about tiling) and optionally a cache line index. Inat least one embodiment, MMU 2245 may include address translationlookaside buffers (TLB) or caches that may reside within graphicsmultiprocessor 2234 or L1 cache or processing cluster 2214. In at leastone embodiment, physical address is processed to distribute surface dataaccess locality to allow efficient request interleaving among partitionunits. In at least one embodiment, cache line index may be used todetermine whether a request for a cache line is a hit or miss.

In at least one embodiment, a processing cluster 2214 may be configuredsuch that each graphics multiprocessor 2234 is coupled to a texture unit2236 for performing texture mapping operations, e.g., determiningtexture sample positions, reading texture data, and filtering texturedata. In at least one embodiment, texture data is read from an internaltexture L1 cache (not shown) or from an L1 cache within graphicsmultiprocessor 2234 and is fetched from an L2 cache, local parallelprocessor memory, or system memory, as needed. In at least oneembodiment, each graphics multiprocessor 2234 outputs processed tasks todata crossbar 2240 to provide processed task to another processingcluster 2214 for further processing or to store processed task in an L2cache, local parallel processor memory, or system memory via memorycrossbar 2216. In at least one embodiment, preROP 2242 (pre-rasteroperations unit) is configured to receive data from graphicsmultiprocessor 2234, direct data to ROP units, which may be located withpartition units as described herein (e.g., partition units 2220A-2220Nof FIG. 22 ). In at least one embodiment, PreROP 2242 unit can performoptimizations for color blending, organize pixel color data, and performaddress translations.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in graphicsprocessing cluster 2214 for inferencing or predicting operations based,at least in part, on weight parameters calculated using neural networktraining operations, neural network functions and/or architectures, orneural network use cases described herein.

FIG. 22D shows a graphics multiprocessor 2234 according to at least oneembodiment. In at least one embodiment, graphics multiprocessor 2234couples with pipeline manager 2232 of processing cluster 2214. In atleast one embodiment, graphics multiprocessor 2234 has an executionpipeline including but not limited to an instruction cache 2252, aninstruction unit 2254, an address mapping unit 2256, a register file2258, one or more general purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) cores2262, and one or more load/store units 2266. GPGPU cores 2262 andload/store units 2266 are coupled with cache memory 2272 and sharedmemory 2270 via a memory and cache interconnect 2268.

In at least one embodiment, instruction cache 2252 receives a stream ofinstructions to execute from pipeline manager 2232. In at least oneembodiment, instructions are cached in instruction cache 2252 anddispatched for execution by instruction unit 2254. In at least oneembodiment, instruction unit 2254 can dispatch instructions as threadgroups (e.g., warps), with each thread of thread group assigned to adifferent execution unit within GPGPU core 2262. In at least oneembodiment, an instruction can access any of a local, shared, or globaladdress space by specifying an address within a unified address space.In at least one embodiment, address mapping unit 2256 can be used totranslate addresses in a unified address space into a distinct memoryaddress that can be accessed by load/store units 2266.

In at least one embodiment, register file 2258 provides a set ofregisters for functional units of graphics multiprocessor 2234. In atleast one embodiment, register file 2258 provides temporary storage foroperands connected to data paths of functional units (e.g., GPGPU cores2262, load/store units 2266) of graphics multiprocessor 2234. In atleast one embodiment, register file 2258 is divided between each offunctional units such that each functional unit is allocated a dedicatedportion of register file 2258. In at least one embodiment, register file2258 is divided between different warps being executed by graphicsmultiprocessor 2234.

In at least one embodiment, GPGPU cores 2262 can each include floatingpoint units (FPUs) and/or integer arithmetic logic units (ALUs) that areused to execute instructions of graphics multiprocessor 2234. GPGPUcores 2262 can be similar in architecture or can differ in architecture.In at least one embodiment, a first portion of GPGPU cores 2262 includea single precision FPU and an integer ALU while a second portion ofGPGPU cores include a double precision FPU. In at least one embodiment,FPUs can implement IEEE 754-2008 standard for floating point arithmeticor enable variable precision floating point arithmetic. In at least oneembodiment, graphics multiprocessor 2234 can additionally include one ormore fixed function or special function units to perform specificfunctions such as copy rectangle or pixel blending operations. In atleast one embodiment one or more of GPGPU cores can also include fixedor special function logic.

In at least one embodiment, GPGPU cores 2262 include SIMD logic capableof performing a single instruction on multiple sets of data. In at leastone embodiment GPGPU cores 2262 can physically execute SIMD4, SIMD8, andSIMD16 instructions and logically execute SIMD1, SIMD2, and SIMD32instructions. In at least one embodiment, SIMD instructions for GPGPUcores can be generated at compile time by a shader compiler orautomatically generated when executing programs written and compiled forsingle program multiple data (SPMD) or SIMT architectures. In at leastone embodiment, multiple threads of a program configured for an SIMTexecution model can executed via a single SIMD instruction. For example,in at least one embodiment, eight SIMT threads that perform same orsimilar operations can be executed in parallel via a single SIMD8 logicunit.

In at least one embodiment, memory and cache interconnect 2268 is aninterconnect network that connects each functional unit of graphicsmultiprocessor 2234 to register file 2258 and to shared memory 2270. Inat least one embodiment, memory and cache interconnect 2268 is acrossbar interconnect that allows load/store unit 2266 to implement loadand store operations between shared memory 2270 and register file 2258.In at least one embodiment, register file 2258 can operate at a samefrequency as GPGPU cores 2262, thus data transfer between GPGPU cores2262 and register file 2258 is very low latency. In at least oneembodiment, shared memory 2270 can be used to enable communicationbetween threads that execute on functional units within graphicsmultiprocessor 2234. In at least one embodiment, cache memory 2272 canbe used as a data cache for example, to cache texture data communicatedbetween functional units and texture unit 2236. In at least oneembodiment, shared memory 2270 can also be used as a program managedcached. In at least one embodiment, threads executing on GPGPU cores2262 can programmatically store data within shared memory in addition toautomatically cached data that is stored within cache memory 2272.

In at least one embodiment, a parallel processor or GPGPU as describedherein is communicatively coupled to host/processor cores to accelerategraphics operations, machine-learning operations, pattern analysisoperations, and various general purpose GPU (GPGPU) functions. In atleast one embodiment, GPU may be communicatively coupled to hostprocessor/cores over a bus or other interconnect (e.g., a high speedinterconnect such as PCIe or NVLink). In at least one embodiment, GPUmay be integrated on same package or chip as cores and communicativelycoupled to cores over an internal processor bus/interconnect (i.e.,internal to package or chip). In at least one embodiment, regardless ofmanner in which GPU is connected, processor cores may allocate work toGPU in form of sequences of commands/instructions contained in a workdescriptor. In at least one embodiment, GPU then uses dedicatedcircuitry/logic for efficiently processing these commands/instructions.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in graphicsmultiprocessor 2234 for inferencing or predicting operations based, atleast in part, on weight parameters calculated using neural networktraining operations, neural network functions and/or architectures, orneural network use cases described herein.

FIG. 23 illustrates a multi-GPU computing system 2300, according to atleast one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, multi-GPU computingsystem 2300 can include a processor 2302 coupled to multiple generalpurpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs) 2306A-D via a host interfaceswitch 2304. In at least one embodiment, host interface switch 2304 is aPCI express switch device that couples processor 2302 to a PCI expressbus over which processor 2302 can communicate with GPGPUs 2306A-D.GPGPUs 2306A-D can interconnect via a set of high-speed point to pointGPU to GPU links 2316. In at least one embodiment, GPU to GPU links 2316connect to each of GPGPUs 2306A-D via a dedicated GPU link. In at leastone embodiment, P2P GPU links 2316 enable direct communication betweeneach of GPGPUs 2306A-D without requiring communication over hostinterface bus 2304 to which processor 2302 is connected. In at least oneembodiment, with GPU-to-GPU traffic directed to P2P GPU links 2316, hostinterface bus 2304 remains available for system memory access or tocommunicate with other instances of multi-GPU computing system 2300, forexample, via one or more network devices. While in at least oneembodiment GPGPUs 2306A-D connect to processor 2302 via host interfaceswitch 2304, in at least one embodiment processor 2302 includes directsupport for P2P GPU links 2316 and can connect directly to GPGPUs2306A-D.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in multi-GPUcomputing system 2300 for inferencing or predicting operations based, atleast in part, on weight parameters calculated using neural networktraining operations, neural network functions and/or architectures, orneural network use cases described herein.

FIG. 24 is a block diagram of a graphics processor 2400, according to atleast one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, graphics processor2400 includes a ring interconnect 2402, a pipeline front-end 2404, amedia engine 2437, and graphics cores 2480A-2480N. In at least oneembodiment, ring interconnect 2402 couples graphics processor 2400 toother processing units, including other graphics processors or one ormore general-purpose processor cores. In at least one embodiment,graphics processor 2400 is one of many processors integrated within amulti-core processing system.

In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 2400 receives batches ofcommands via ring interconnect 2402. In at least one embodiment,incoming commands are interpreted by a command streamer 2403 in pipelinefront-end 2404. In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 2400includes scalable execution logic to perform 3D geometry processing andmedia processing via graphics core(s) 2480A-2480N. In at least oneembodiment, for 3D geometry processing commands, command streamer 2403supplies commands to geometry pipeline 2436. In at least one embodiment,for at least some media processing commands, command streamer 2403supplies commands to a video front end 2434, which couples with a mediaengine 2437. In at least one embodiment, media engine 2437 includes aVideo Quality Engine (VQE) 2430 for video and image post-processing anda multi-format encode/decode (MFX) 2433 engine to providehardware-accelerated media data encode and decode. In at least oneembodiment, geometry pipeline 2436 and media engine 2437 each generateexecution threads for thread execution resources provided by at leastone graphics core 2480A.

In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 2400 includes scalablethread execution resources featuring modular cores 2480A-2480N(sometimes referred to as core slices), each having multiple sub-cores2450A-550N, 2460A-2460N (sometimes referred to as core sub-slices). Inat least one embodiment, graphics processor 2400 can have any number ofgraphics cores 2480A through 2480N. In at least one embodiment, graphicsprocessor 2400 includes a graphics core 2480A having at least a firstsub-core 2450A and a second sub-core 2460A. In at least one embodiment,graphics processor 2400 is a low power processor with a single sub-core(e.g., 2450A). In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 2400includes multiple graphics cores 2480A-2480N, each including a set offirst sub-cores 2450A-2450N and a set of second sub-cores 2460A-2460N.In at least one embodiment, each sub-core in first sub-cores 2450A-2450Nincludes at least a first set of execution units 2452A-2452N andmedia/texture samplers 2454A-2454N. In at least one embodiment, eachsub-core in second sub-cores 2460A-2460N includes at least a second setof execution units 2462A-2462N and samplers 2464A-2464N. In at least oneembodiment, each sub-core 2450A-2450N, 2460A-2460N shares a set ofshared resources 2470A-2470N. In at least one embodiment, sharedresources include shared cache memory and pixel operation logic.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, inference and/or training logic 915 may be used in graphicsprocessor 2400 for inferencing or predicting operations based, at leastin part, on weight parameters calculated using neural network trainingoperations, neural network functions and/or architectures, or neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

FIG. 25 c 2500 that may include logic circuits to perform instructions,according to at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment,processor 2500 may perform instructions, including x86 instructions, ARMinstructions, specialized instructions for application-specificintegrated circuits (ASICs), etc. In at least one embodiment, processor2510 may include registers to store packed data, such as 64-bit wideMMX™ registers in microprocessors enabled with MMX technology from IntelCorporation of Santa Clara, Calif. In at least one embodiment, MMXregisters, available in both integer and floating point forms, mayoperate with packed data elements that accompany single instruction,multiple data (“SIMD”) and streaming SIMD extensions (“SSE”)instructions. In at least one embodiment, 128-bit wide XMM registersrelating to SSE2, SSE3, SSE4, AVX, or beyond (referred to generically as“S SEx”) technology may hold such packed data operands. In at least oneembodiment, processors 2510 may perform instructions to acceleratemachine learning or deep learning algorithms, training, or inferencing.

In at least one embodiment, processor 2500 includes an in-order frontend (“front end”) 2501 to fetch instructions to be executed and prepareinstructions to be used later in processor pipeline. In at least oneembodiment, front end 2501 may include several units. In at least oneembodiment, an instruction prefetcher 2526 fetches instructions frommemory and feeds instructions to an instruction decoder 2528 which inturn decodes or interprets instructions. For example, in at least oneembodiment, instruction decoder 2528 decodes a received instruction intoone or more operations called “micro-instructions” or “micro-operations”(also called “micro ops” or “uops”) that machine may execute. In atleast one embodiment, instruction decoder 2528 parses instruction intoan opcode and corresponding data and control fields that may be used bymicro-architecture to perform operations in accordance with at least oneembodiment. In at least one embodiment, a trace cache 2530 may assembledecoded uops into program ordered sequences or traces in a uop queue2534 for execution. In at least one embodiment, when trace cache 2530encounters a complex instruction, a microcode ROM 2532 provides uopsneeded to complete operation.

In at least one embodiment, some instructions may be converted into asingle micro-op, whereas others need several micro-ops to complete fulloperation. In at least one embodiment, if more than four micro-ops areneeded to complete an instruction, instruction decoder 2528 may accessmicrocode ROM 2532 to perform instruction. In at least one embodiment,an instruction may be decoded into a small number of micro-ops forprocessing at instruction decoder 2528. In at least one embodiment, aninstruction may be stored within microcode ROM 2532 should a number ofmicro-ops be needed to accomplish operation. In at least one embodiment,trace cache 2530 refers to an entry point programmable logic array(“PLA”) to determine a correct micro-instruction pointer for readingmicrocode sequences to complete one or more instructions from microcodeROM 2532 in accordance with at least one embodiment. In at least oneembodiment, after microcode ROM 2532 finishes sequencing micro-ops foran instruction, front end 2501 of machine may resume fetching micro-opsfrom trace cache 2530.

In at least one embodiment, out-of-order execution engine (“out of orderengine”) 2503 may prepare instructions for execution. In at least oneembodiment, out-of-order execution logic has a number of buffers tosmooth out and re-order flow of instructions to optimize performance asthey go down pipeline and get scheduled for execution. out-of-orderexecution engine 2503 includes, without limitation, anallocator/register renamer 2540, a memory uop queue 2542, aninteger/floating point uop queue 2544, a memory scheduler 2546, a fastscheduler 2502, a slow/general floating point scheduler (“slow/generalFP scheduler”) 2504, and a simple floating point scheduler (“simple FPscheduler”) 2506. In at least one embodiment, fast schedule 2502,slow/general floating point scheduler 2504, and simple floating pointscheduler 2506 are also collectively referred to herein as “uopschedulers 2502, 2504, 2506.” Allocator/register renamer 2540 allocatesmachine buffers and resources that each uop needs in order to execute.In at least one embodiment, allocator/register renamer 2540 renameslogic registers onto entries in a register file. In at least oneembodiment, allocator/register renamer 2540 also allocates an entry foreach uop in one of two uop queues, memory uop queue 2542 for memoryoperations and integer/floating point uop queue 2544 for non-memoryoperations, in front of memory scheduler 2546 and uop schedulers 2502,2504, 2506. In at least one embodiment, uop schedulers 2502, 2504, 2506,determine when a uop is ready to execute based on readiness of theirdependent input register operand sources and availability of executionresources uops need to complete their operation. In at least oneembodiment, fast scheduler 2502 of at least one embodiment may scheduleon each half of main clock cycle while slow/general floating pointscheduler 2504 and simple floating point scheduler 2506 may scheduleonce per main processor clock cycle. In at least one embodiment, uopschedulers 2502, 2504, 2506 arbitrate for dispatch ports to scheduleuops for execution.

In at least one embodiment, execution block b 11 includes, withoutlimitation, an integer register file/bypass network 2508, a floatingpoint register file/bypass network (“FP register file/bypass network”)2510, address generation units (“AGUs”) 2512 and 2514, fast ArithmeticLogic Units (ALUs) (“fast ALUs”) 2516 and 2518, a slow Arithmetic LogicUnit (“slow ALU”) 2520, a floating point ALU (“FP”) 2522, and a floatingpoint move unit (“FP move”) 2524. In at least one embodiment, integerregister file/bypass network 2508 and floating point registerfile/bypass network 2510 are also referred to herein as “register files2508, 2510.” In at least one embodiment, AGUSs 2512 and 2514, fast ALUs2516 and 2518, slow ALU 2520, floating point ALU 2522, and floatingpoint move unit 2524 are also referred to herein as “execution units2512, 2514, 2516, 2518, 2520, 2522, and 2524.” In at least oneembodiment, execution block b 11 may include, without limitation, anynumber (including zero) and type of register files, bypass networks,address generation units, and execution units, in any combination.

In at least one embodiment, register files 2508, 2510 may be arrangedbetween uop schedulers 2502, 2504, 2506, and execution units 2512, 2514,2516, 2518, 2520, 2522, and 2524. In at least one embodiment, integerregister file/bypass network 2508 performs integer operations. In atleast one embodiment, floating point register file/bypass network 2510performs floating point operations. In at least one embodiment, each ofregister files 2508, 2510 may include, without limitation, a bypassnetwork that may bypass or forward just completed results that have notyet been written into register file to new dependent uops. In at leastone embodiment, register files 2508, 2510 may communicate data with eachother. In at least one embodiment, integer register file/bypass network2508 may include, without limitation, two separate register files, oneregister file for low-order thirty-two bits of data and a secondregister file for high order thirty-two bits of data. In at least oneembodiment, floating point register file/bypass network 2510 mayinclude, without limitation, 128-bit wide entries because floating pointinstructions typically have operands from 64 to 128 bits in width.

In at least one embodiment, execution units 2512, 2514, 2516, 2518,2520, 2522, 2524 may execute instructions. In at least one embodiment,register files 2508, 2510 store integer and floating point data operandvalues that micro-instructions need to execute. In at least oneembodiment, processor 2500 may include, without limitation, any numberand combination of execution units 2512, 2514, 2516, 2518, 2520, 2522,2524. In at least one embodiment, floating point ALU 2522 and floatingpoint move unit 2524, may execute floating point, MMX, SIMD, AVX andSSE, or other operations, including specialized machine learninginstructions. In at least one embodiment, floating point ALU 2522 mayinclude, without limitation, a 64-bit by 64-bit floating point dividerto execute divide, square root, and remainder micro ops. In at least oneembodiment, instructions involving a floating point value may be handledwith floating point hardware. In at least one embodiment, ALU operationsmay be passed to fast ALUs 2516, 2518. In at least one embodiment, fastALUS 2516, 2518 may execute fast operations with an effective latency ofhalf a clock cycle. In at least one embodiment, most complex integeroperations go to slow ALU 2520 as slow ALU 2520 may include, withoutlimitation, integer execution hardware for long-latency type ofoperations, such as a multiplier, shifts, flag logic, and branchprocessing. In at least one embodiment, memory load/store operations maybe executed by AGUS 2512, 2514. In at least one embodiment, fast ALU2516, fast ALU 2518, and slow ALU 2520 may perform integer operations on64-bit data operands. In at least one embodiment, fast ALU 2516, fastALU 2518, and slow ALU 2520 may be implemented to support a variety ofdata bit sizes including sixteen, thirty-two, 128, 256, etc. In at leastone embodiment, floating point ALU 2522 and floating point move unit2524 may be implemented to support a range of operands having bits ofvarious widths. In at least one embodiment, floating point ALU 2522 andfloating point move unit 2524 may operate on 128-bit wide packed dataoperands in conjunction with SIMD and multimedia instructions.

In at least one embodiment, uop schedulers 2502, 2504, 2506, dispatchdependent operations before parent load has finished executing. In atleast one embodiment, as uops may be speculatively scheduled andexecuted in processor 2500, processor 2500 may also include logic tohandle memory misses. In at least one embodiment, if a data load missesin data cache, there may be dependent operations in flight in pipelinethat have left scheduler with temporarily incorrect data. In at leastone embodiment, a replay mechanism tracks and re-executes instructionsthat use incorrect data. In at least one embodiment, dependentoperations might need to be replayed and independent ones may be allowedto complete. In at least one embodiment, schedulers and replay mechanismof at least one embodiment of a processor may also be designed to catchinstruction sequences for text string comparison operations.

In at least one embodiment, term “registers” may refer to on-boardprocessor storage locations that may be used as part of instructions toidentify operands. In at least one embodiment, registers may be thosethat may be usable from outside of processor (from a programmer'sperspective). In at least one embodiment, registers might not be limitedto a particular type of circuit. Rather, in at least one embodiment, aregister may store data, provide data, and perform functions describedherein. In at least one embodiment, registers described herein may beimplemented by circuitry within a processor using any number ofdifferent techniques, such as dedicated physical registers, dynamicallyallocated physical registers using register renaming, combinations ofdedicated and dynamically allocated physical registers, etc. In at leastone embodiment, integer registers store 32-bit integer data. A registerfile of at least one embodiment also contains eight multimedia SIMDregisters for packed data.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment portions or all of inference and/or training logic 915 may beincorporated into EXE Block 2511 and other memory or registers shown ornot shown. For example, in at least one embodiment, training and/orinferencing techniques described herein may use one or more of ALUsillustrated in EXE Block 2511. Moreover, weight parameters may be storedin on-chip or off-chip memory and/or registers (shown or not shown) thatconfigure ALUs of EXE Block 2511 to perform one or more machine learningalgorithms, neural network architectures, use cases, or trainingtechniques described herein.

FIG. 26 illustrates a deep learning application processor 2600,according to at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, deeplearning application processor 2600 uses instructions that, if executedby deep learning application processor 2600, cause deep learningapplication processor 2600 to perform some or all of processes andtechniques described throughout this disclosure. In at least oneembodiment, deep learning application processor 2600 is anapplication-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). In at least oneembodiment, application processor 2600 performs matrix multiplyoperations either “hard-wired” into hardware as a result of performingone or more instructions or both. In at least one embodiment, deeplearning application processor 2600 includes, without limitation,processing clusters 2610(1)-2610(12), Inter-Chip Links (“ICLs”)2620(1)-2620(12), Inter-Chip Controllers (“ICCs”) 2630(1)-2630(2), highbandwidth memory second generation (“HBM2”) 2640(1)-2640(4), memorycontrollers (“Mem Ctrlrs”) 2642(1)-2642(4), high bandwidth memoryphysical layer (“HBM PHY”) 2644(1)-2644(4), a management-controllercentral processing unit (“management-controller CPU”) 2650, a SerialPeripheral Interface, Inter-Integrated Circuit, and General PurposeInput/Output block (“SPI, I2C, GPIO”) 2660, a peripheral componentinterconnect express controller and direct memory access block (“PCIeController and DMA”) 2670, and a sixteen-lane peripheral componentinterconnect express port (“PCI Express x 16”) 2680.

In at least one embodiment, processing clusters 2610 may perform deeplearning operations, including inference or prediction operations basedon weight parameters calculated one or more training techniques,including those described herein. In at least one embodiment, eachprocessing cluster 2610 may include, without limitation, any number andtype of processors. In at least one embodiment, deep learningapplication processor 2600 may include any number and type of processingclusters 2600. In at least one embodiment, Inter-Chip Links 2620 arebi-directional. In at least one embodiment, Inter-Chip Links 2620 andInter-Chip Controllers 2630 enable multiple deep learning applicationprocessors 2600 to exchange information, including activationinformation resulting from performing one or more machine learningalgorithms embodied in one or more neural networks. In at least oneembodiment, deep learning application processor 2600 may include anynumber (including zero) and type of ICLs 2620 and ICCs 2630.

In at least one embodiment, HBM2s 2640 provide a total of 32 Gigabytes(GB) of memory. HBM2 2640(i) is associated with both memory controller2642(i) and HBM PHY 2644(i). In at least one embodiment, any number ofHBM2s 2640 may provide any type and total amount of high bandwidthmemory and may be associated with any number (including zero) and typeof memory controllers 2642 and HBM PHYs 2644. In at least oneembodiment, SPI, I2C, GPIO 2660, PCIe Controller and DMA 2670, and/orPCIe 2680 may be replaced with any number and type of blocks that enableany number and type of communication standards in any technicallyfeasible fashion.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, deep learning application processor is used to train amachine learning model, such as a neural network, to predict or inferinformation provided to deep learning application processor 2600. In atleast one embodiment, deep learning application processor 2600 is usedto infer or predict information based on a trained machine learningmodel (e.g., neural network) that has been trained by another processoror system or by deep learning application processor 2600. In at leastone embodiment, processor 2600 may be used to perform one or more neuralnetwork use cases described herein.

FIG. 27 is a block diagram of a neuromorphic processor 2700, accordingto at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, neuromorphicprocessor 2700 may receive one or more inputs from sources external toneuromorphic processor 2700. In at least one embodiment, these inputsmay be transmitted to one or more neurons 2702 within neuromorphicprocessor 2700. In at least one embodiment, neurons 2702 and componentsthereof may be implemented using circuitry or logic, including one ormore arithmetic logic units (ALUs). In at least one embodiment,neuromorphic processor 2700 may include, without limitation, thousandsor millions of instances of neurons 2702, but any suitable number ofneurons 2702 may be used. In at least one embodiment, each instance ofneuron 2702 may include a neuron input 2704 and a neuron output 2706. Inat least one embodiment, neurons 2702 may generate outputs that may betransmitted to inputs of other instances of neurons 2702. For example,in at least one embodiment, neuron inputs 2704 and neuron outputs 2706may be interconnected via synapses 2708.

In at least one embodiment, neurons 2702 and synapses 2708 may beinterconnected such that neuromorphic processor 2700 operates to processor analyze information received by neuromorphic processor 2700. In atleast one embodiment, neurons 2702 may transmit an output pulse (or“fire” or “spike”) when inputs received through neuron input 2704 exceeda threshold. In at least one embodiment, neurons 2702 may sum orintegrate signals received at neuron inputs 2704. For example, in atleast one embodiment, neurons 2702 may be implemented as leakyintegrate-and-fire neurons, wherein if a sum (referred to as a “membranepotential”) exceeds a threshold value, neuron 2702 may generate anoutput (or “fire”) using a transfer function such as a sigmoid orthreshold function. In at least one embodiment, a leakyintegrate-and-fire neuron may sum signals received at neuron inputs 2704into a membrane potential and may also apply a decay factor (or leak) toreduce a membrane potential. In at least one embodiment, a leakyintegrate-and-fire neuron may fire if multiple input signals arereceived at neuron inputs 2704 rapidly enough to exceed a thresholdvalue (i.e., before a membrane potential decays too low to fire). In atleast one embodiment, neurons 2702 may be implemented using circuits orlogic that receive inputs, integrate inputs into a membrane potential,and decay a membrane potential. In at least one embodiment, inputs maybe averaged, or any other suitable transfer function may be used.Furthermore, in at least one embodiment, neurons 2702 may include,without limitation, comparator circuits or logic that generate an outputspike at neuron output 2706 when result of applying a transfer functionto neuron input 2704 exceeds a threshold. In at least one embodiment,once neuron 2702 fires, it may disregard previously received inputinformation by, for example, resetting a membrane potential to 0 oranother suitable default value. In at least one embodiment, oncemembrane potential is reset to 0, neuron 2702 may resume normaloperation after a suitable period of time (or refractory period).

In at least one embodiment, neurons 2702 may be interconnected throughsynapses 2708. In at least one embodiment, synapses 2708 may operate totransmit signals from an output of a first neuron 2702 to an input of asecond neuron 2702. In at least one embodiment, neurons 2702 maytransmit information over more than one instance of synapse 2708. In atleast one embodiment, one or more instances of neuron output 2706 may beconnected, via an instance of synapse 2708, to an instance of neuroninput 2704 in same neuron 2702. In at least one embodiment, an instanceof neuron 2702 generating an output to be transmitted over an instanceof synapse 2708 may be referred to as a “pre-synaptic neuron” withrespect to that instance of synapse 2708. In at least one embodiment, aninstance of neuron 2702 receiving an input transmitted over an instanceof synapse 2708 may be referred to as a “post-synaptic neuron” withrespect to that instance of synapse 2708. Because an instance of neuron2702 may receive inputs from one or more instances of synapse 2708, andmay also transmit outputs over one or more instances of synapse 2708, asingle instance of neuron 2702 may therefore be both a “pre-synapticneuron” and “post-synaptic neuron,” with respect to various instances ofsynapses 2708, in at least one embodiment.

In at least one embodiment, neurons 2702 may be organized into one ormore layers. Each instance of neuron 2702 may have one neuron output2706 that may fan out through one or more synapses 2708 to one or moreneuron inputs 2704. In at least one embodiment, neuron outputs 2706 ofneurons 2702 in a first layer 2710 may be connected to neuron inputs2704 of neurons 2702 in a second layer 2712. In at least one embodiment,layer 2710 may be referred to as a “feed-forward layer.” In at least oneembodiment, each instance of neuron 2702 in an instance of first layer2710 may fan out to each instance of neuron 2702 in second layer 2712.In at least one embodiment, first layer 2710 may be referred to as a“fully connected feed-forward layer.” In at least one embodiment, eachinstance of neuron 2702 in an instance of second layer 2712 may fan outto fewer than all instances of neuron 2702 in a third layer 2714. In atleast one embodiment, second layer 2712 may be referred to as a“sparsely connected feed-forward layer.” In at least one embodiment,neurons 2702 in second layer 2712 may fan out to neurons 2702 inmultiple other layers, including to neurons 2702 in (same) second layer2712. In at least one embodiment, second layer 2712 may be referred toas a “recurrent layer.” Neuromorphic processor 2700 may include, withoutlimitation, any suitable combination of recurrent layers andfeed-forward layers, including, without limitation, both sparselyconnected feed-forward layers and fully connected feed-forward layers.

In at least one embodiment, neuromorphic processor 2700 may include,without limitation, a reconfigurable interconnect architecture ordedicated hard wired interconnects to connect synapse 2708 to neurons2702. In at least one embodiment, neuromorphic processor 2700 mayinclude, without limitation, circuitry or logic that allows synapses tobe allocated to different neurons 2702 as needed based on neural networktopology and neuron fan-in/out. For example, in at least one embodiment,synapses 2708 may be connected to neurons 2702 using an interconnectfabric, such as network-on-chip, or with dedicated connections. In atleast one embodiment, synapse interconnections and components thereofmay be implemented using circuitry or logic.

FIG. 28 is a block diagram of a processing system, according to at leastone embodiment. In at least one embodiment, system 2800 includes one ormore processors 2802 and one or more graphics processors 2808, and maybe a single processor desktop system, a multiprocessor workstationsystem, or a server system having a large number of processors 2802 orprocessor cores 2807. In at least one embodiment, system 2800 is aprocessing platform incorporated within a system-on-a-chip (SoC)integrated circuit for use in mobile, handheld, or embedded devices.

In at least one embodiment, system 2800 can include, or be incorporatedwithin a server-based gaming platform, a game console, including a gameand media console, a mobile gaming console, a handheld game console, oran online game console. In at least one embodiment, system 2800 is amobile phone, smart phone, tablet computing device or mobile Internetdevice. In at least one embodiment, processing system 2800 can alsoinclude, couple with, or be integrated within a wearable device, such asa smart watch wearable device, smart eyewear device, augmented realitydevice, or virtual reality device. In at least one embodiment,processing system 2800 is a television or set top box device having oneor more processors 2802 and a graphical interface generated by one ormore graphics processors 2808.

In at least one embodiment, one or more processors 2802 each include oneor more processor cores 2807 to process instructions which, whenexecuted, perform operations for system and user software. In at leastone embodiment, each of one or more processor cores 2807 is configuredto process a specific instruction set 2809. In at least one embodiment,instruction set 2809 may facilitate Complex Instruction Set Computing(CISC), Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC), or computing via aVery Long Instruction Word (VLIW). In at least one embodiment, processorcores 2807 may each process a different instruction set 2809, which mayinclude instructions to facilitate emulation of other instruction sets.In at least one embodiment, processor core 2807 may also include otherprocessing devices, such a Digital Signal Processor (DSP).

In at least one embodiment, processor 2802 includes cache memory 2804.In at least one embodiment, processor 2802 can have a single internalcache or multiple levels of internal cache. In at least one embodiment,cache memory is shared among various components of processor 2802. In atleast one embodiment, processor 2802 also uses an external cache (e.g.,a Level-3 (L3) cache or Last Level Cache (LLC)) (not shown), which maybe shared among processor cores 2807 using known cache coherencytechniques. In at least one embodiment, register file 2806 isadditionally included in processor 2802 which may include differenttypes of registers for storing different types of data (e.g., integerregisters, floating point registers, status registers, and aninstruction pointer register). In at least one embodiment, register file2806 may include general-purpose registers or other registers.

In at least one embodiment, one or more processor(s) 2802 are coupledwith one or more interface bus(es) 2810 to transmit communicationsignals such as address, data, or control signals between processor 2802and other components in system 2800. In at least one embodimentinterface bus 2810, in one embodiment, can be a processor bus, such as aversion of a Direct Media Interface (DMI) bus. In at least oneembodiment, interface 2810 is not limited to a DMI bus, and may includeone or more Peripheral Component Interconnect buses (e.g., PCI, PCIExpress), memory busses, or other types of interface busses. In at leastone embodiment processor(s) 2802 include an integrated memory controller2816 and a platform controller hub 2830. In at least one embodiment,memory controller 2816 facilitates communication between a memory deviceand other components of system 2800, while platform controller hub (PCH)2830 provides connections to I/O devices via a local I/O bus.

In at least one embodiment, memory device 2820 can be a dynamic randomaccess memory (DRAM) device, a static random access memory (SRAM)device, flash memory device, phase-change memory device, or some othermemory device having suitable performance to serve as process memory. Inat least one embodiment memory device 2820 can operate as system memoryfor system 2800, to store data 2822 and instructions 2821 for use whenone or more processors 2802 executes an application or process. In atleast one embodiment, memory controller 2816 also couples with anoptional external graphics processor 2812, which may communicate withone or more graphics processors 2808 in processors 2802 to performgraphics and media operations. In at least one embodiment, a displaydevice 2811 can connect to processor(s) 2802. In at least one embodimentdisplay device 2811 can include one or more of an internal displaydevice, as in a mobile electronic device or a laptop device or anexternal display device attached via a display interface (e.g.,DisplayPort, etc.). In at least one embodiment, display device 2811 caninclude a head mounted display (HMD) such as a stereoscopic displaydevice for use in virtual reality (VR) applications or augmented reality(AR) applications.

In at least one embodiment, platform controller hub 2830 enablesperipherals to connect to memory device 2820 and processor 2802 via ahigh-speed I/O bus. In at least one embodiment, I/O peripherals include,but are not limited to, an audio controller 2846, a network controller2834, a firmware interface 2828, a wireless transceiver 2826, touchsensors 2825, a data storage device 2824 (e.g., hard disk drive, flashmemory, etc.). In at least one embodiment, data storage device 2824 canconnect via a storage interface (e.g., SATA) or via a peripheral bus,such as a Peripheral Component Interconnect bus (e.g., PCI, PCIExpress). In at least one embodiment, touch sensors 2825 can includetouch screen sensors, pressure sensors, or fingerprint sensors. In atleast one embodiment, wireless transceiver 2826 can be a Wi-Fitransceiver, a Bluetooth transceiver, or a mobile network transceiversuch as a 3G, 4G, or Long Term Evolution (LTE) transceiver. In at leastone embodiment, firmware interface 2828 enables communication withsystem firmware, and can be, for example, a unified extensible firmwareinterface (UEFI). In at least one embodiment, network controller 2834can enable a network connection to a wired network. In at least oneembodiment, a high-performance network controller (not shown) coupleswith interface bus 2810. In at least one embodiment, audio controller2846 is a multi-channel high definition audio controller. In at leastone embodiment, system 2800 includes an optional legacy I/O controller2840 for coupling legacy (e.g., Personal System 2 (PS/2)) devices tosystem. In at least one embodiment, platform controller hub 2830 canalso connect to one or more Universal Serial Bus (USB) controllers 2842connect input devices, such as keyboard and mouse 2843 combinations, acamera 2844, or other USB input devices.

In at least one embodiment, an instance of memory controller 2816 andplatform controller hub 2830 may be integrated into a discreet externalgraphics processor, such as external graphics processor 2812. In atleast one embodiment, platform controller hub 2830 and/or memorycontroller 2816 may be external to one or more processor(s) 2802. Forexample, in at least one embodiment, system 2800 can include an externalmemory controller 2816 and platform controller hub 2830, which may beconfigured as a memory controller hub and peripheral controller hubwithin a system chipset that is in communication with processor(s) 2802.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment portions or all of inference and/or training logic 915 may beincorporated into graphics processor 2800. For example, in at least oneembodiment, training and/or inferencing techniques described herein mayuse one or more of ALUs embodied in 3D pipeline 2812. Moreover, in atleast one embodiment, inferencing and/or training operations describedherein may be done using logic other than logic illustrated in FIG. 9Aor 9B. In at least one embodiment, weight parameters may be stored inon-chip or off-chip memory and/or registers (shown or not shown) thatconfigure ALUs of graphics processor 2800 to perform one or more machinelearning algorithms, neural network architectures, use cases, ortraining techniques described herein.

FIG. 29 is a block diagram of a processor 2900 c 2902A-2902N, anintegrated memory controller 2914, and an integrated graphics processor2908, according to at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment,processor 2900 can include additional cores up to and includingadditional core 2902N represented by dashed lined boxes. In at least oneembodiment, each of processor cores 2902A-2902N includes one or moreinternal cache units 2904A-2904N. In at least one embodiment, eachprocessor core also has access to one or more shared cached units 2906.

In at least one embodiment, internal cache units 2904A-2904N and sharedcache units 2906 represent a cache memory hierarchy within processor2900. In at least one embodiment, cache memory units 2904A-2904N mayinclude at least one level of instruction and data cache within eachprocessor core and one or more levels of shared mid-level cache, such asa Level 2 (L2), Level 3 (L3), Level 4 (L4), or other levels of cache,where a highest level of cache before external memory is classified asan LLC. In at least one embodiment, cache coherency logic maintainscoherency between various cache units 2906 and 2904A-2904N.

In at least one embodiment, processor 2900 may also include a set of oneor more bus controller units 2916 and a system agent core 2910. In atleast one embodiment, one or more bus controller units 2916 manage a setof peripheral buses, such as one or more PCI or PCI express busses. Inat least one embodiment, system agent core 2910 provides managementfunctionality for various processor components. In at least oneembodiment, system agent core 2910 includes one or more integratedmemory controllers 2914 to manage access to various external memorydevices (not shown).

In at least one embodiment, one or more of processor cores 2902A-2902Ninclude support for simultaneous multi-threading. In at least oneembodiment, system agent core 2910 includes components for coordinatingand operating cores 2902A-2902N during multi-threaded processing. In atleast one embodiment, system agent core 2910 may additionally include apower control unit (PCU), which includes logic and components toregulate one or more power states of processor cores 2902A-2902N andgraphics processor 2908.

In at least one embodiment, processor 2900 additionally includesgraphics processor 2908 to execute graphics processing operations. In atleast one embodiment, graphics processor 2908 couples with shared cacheunits 2906, and system agent core 2910, including one or more integratedmemory controllers 2914. In at least one embodiment, system agent core2910 also includes a display controller 2911 to drive graphics processoroutput to one or more coupled displays. In at least one embodiment,display controller 2911 may also be a separate module coupled withgraphics processor 2908 via at least one interconnect, or may beintegrated within graphics processor 2908.

In at least one embodiment, a ring based interconnect unit 2912 is usedto couple internal components of processor 2900. In at least oneembodiment, an alternative interconnect unit may be used, such as apoint-to-point interconnect, a switched interconnect, or othertechniques. In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 2908 coupleswith ring interconnect 2912 via an I/O link 2913.

In at least one embodiment, I/O link 2913 represents at least one ofmultiple varieties of I/O interconnects, including an on package I/Ointerconnect which facilitates communication between various processorcomponents and a high-performance embedded memory module 2918, such asan eDRAM module. In at least one embodiment, each of processor cores2902A-2902N and graphics processor 2908 use embedded memory modules 2918as a shared Last Level Cache.

In at least one embodiment, processor cores 2902A-2902N are homogenouscores executing a common instruction set architecture. In at least oneembodiment, processor cores 2902A-2902N are heterogeneous in terms ofinstruction set architecture (ISA), where one or more of processor cores2902A-2902N execute a common instruction set, while one or more othercores of processor cores 2902A-29-02N executes a subset of a commoninstruction set or a different instruction set. In at least oneembodiment, processor cores 2902A-2902N are heterogeneous in terms ofmicroarchitecture, where one or more cores having a relatively higherpower consumption couple with one or more power cores having a lowerpower consumption. In at least one embodiment, processor 2900 can beimplemented on one or more chips or as a SoC integrated circuit.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment portions or all of inference and/or training logic 915 may beincorporated into graphics processor 2910. For example, in at least oneembodiment, training and/or inferencing techniques described herein mayuse one or more of ALUs embodied in 3D pipeline 2812, graphics core(s)2915A, shared function logic 2916, graphics core(s) 2915B, sharedfunction logic 2920, or other logic in FIG. 29 . Moreover, in at leastone embodiment, inferencing and/or training operations described hereinmay be done using logic other than logic illustrated in FIG. 9A or 9B.In at least one embodiment, weight parameters may be stored in on-chipor off-chip memory and/or registers (shown or not shown) that configureALUs of graphics processor 2910 to perform one or more machine learningalgorithms, neural network architectures, use cases, or trainingtechniques described herein.

FIG. 30 is a block diagram of a graphics processor 3000, which may be adiscrete graphics processing unit, or may be a graphics processorintegrated with a plurality of processing cores. In at least oneembodiment, graphics processor 3000 communicates via a memory mapped I/Ointerface to registers on graphics processor 3000 and with commandsplaced into memory. In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 3000includes a memory interface 3014 to access memory. In at least oneembodiment, memory interface 3014 is an interface to local memory, oneor more internal caches, one or more shared external caches, and/or tosystem memory.

In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 3000 also includes adisplay controller 3002 to drive display output data to a display device3020. In at least one embodiment, display controller 3002 includeshardware for one or more overlay planes for display device 3020 andcomposition of multiple layers of video or user interface elements. Inat least one embodiment, display device 3020 can be an internal orexternal display device. In at least one embodiment, display device 3020is a head mounted display device, such as a virtual reality (VR) displaydevice or an augmented reality (AR) display device. In at least oneembodiment, graphics processor 3000 includes a video codec engine 3006to encode, decode, or transcode media to, from, or between one or moremedia encoding formats, including, but not limited to Moving PictureExperts Group (MPEG) formats such as MPEG-2, Advanced Video Coding (AVC)formats such as H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, as well as the Society of MotionPicture & Television Engineers (SMPTE) 421M/VC-1, and Joint PhotographicExperts Group (JPEG) formats such as JPEG, and Motion JPEG (MJPEG)formats.

In at least one embodiment, graphics processor 3000 includes a blockimage transfer (BLIT) engine 3004 to perform two-dimensional (2D)rasterizer operations including, for example, bit-boundary blocktransfers. However, in at least one embodiment, 2D graphics operationsare performed using one or more components of graphics processing engine(GPE) 3010. In at least one embodiment, GPE 3010 is a compute engine forperforming graphics operations, including three-dimensional (3D)graphics operations and media operations.

In at least one embodiment, GPE 3010 includes a 3D pipeline 3012 forperforming 3D operations, such as rendering three-dimensional images andscenes using processing functions that act upon 3D primitive shapes(e.g., rectangle, triangle, etc.). 3D pipeline 3012 includesprogrammable and fixed function elements that perform various tasksand/or spawn execution threads to a 3D/Media sub-system 3015. While 3Dpipeline 3012 can be used to perform media operations, in at least oneembodiment, GPE 3010 also includes a media pipeline 3016 that is used toperform media operations, such as video post-processing and imageenhancement.

In at least one embodiment, media pipeline 3016 includes fixed functionor programmable logic units to perform one or more specialized mediaoperations, such as video decode acceleration, video de-interlacing, andvideo encode acceleration in place of, or on behalf of video codecengine 3006. In at least one embodiment, media pipeline 3016additionally includes a thread spawning unit to spawn threads forexecution on 3D/Media sub-system 3015. In at least one embodiment,spawned threads perform computations for media operations on one or moregraphics execution units included in 3D/Media sub-system 3015.

In at least one embodiment, 3D/Media subsystem 3015 includes logic forexecuting threads spawned by 3D pipeline 3012 and media pipeline 3016.In at least one embodiment, 3D pipeline 3012 and media pipeline 3016send thread execution requests to 3D/Media subsystem 3015, whichincludes thread dispatch logic for arbitrating and dispatching variousrequests to available thread execution resources. In at least oneembodiment, execution resources include an array of graphics executionunits to process 3D and media threads. In at least one embodiment,3D/Media subsystem 3015 includes one or more internal caches for threadinstructions and data. In at least one embodiment, subsystem 3015 alsoincludes shared memory, including registers and addressable memory, toshare data between threads and to store output data.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment portions or all of inference and/or training logic 915 may beincorporated into graphics processor 3000. For example, in at least oneembodiment, training and/or inferencing techniques described herein mayuse one or more of ALUs embodied in 3D pipeline 3012. Moreover, in atleast one embodiment, inferencing and/or training operations describedherein may be done using logic other than logic illustrated in FIG. 9Aor 9B. In at least one embodiment, weight parameters may be stored inon-chip or off-chip memory and/or registers (shown or not shown) thatconfigure ALUs of graphics processor 3000 to perform one or more machinelearning algorithms, neural network architectures, use cases, ortraining techniques described herein.

FIG. 31 is a block diagram of a graphics processing engine 3110 of agraphics processor in accordance with at least one embodiment. In atleast one embodiment, graphics processing engine (GPE) 3110 is a versionof GPE 3010 shown in FIG. 30 . In at least one embodiment, mediapipeline 3016 is optional and may not be explicitly included within GPE3110. In at least one embodiment, a separate media and/or imageprocessor is coupled to GPE 3110.

In at least one embodiment, GPE 3110 is coupled to or includes a commandstreamer 3103, which provides a command stream to 3D pipeline 3012and/or media pipelines 3016. In at least one embodiment, commandstreamer 3103 is coupled to memory, which can be system memory, or oneor more of internal cache memory and shared cache memory. In at leastone embodiment, command streamer 3103 receives commands from memory andsends commands to 3D pipeline 3012 and/or media pipeline 3016. In atleast one embodiment, commands are instructions, primitives, ormicro-operations fetched from a ring buffer, which stores commands for3D pipeline 3012 and media pipeline 3016. In at least one embodiment, aring buffer can additionally include batch command buffers storingbatches of multiple commands. In at least one embodiment, commands for3D pipeline 3012 can also include references to data stored in memory,such as but not limited to vertex and geometry data for 3D pipeline 3012and/or image data and memory objects for media pipeline 3016. In atleast one embodiment, 3D pipeline 3012 and media pipeline 3016 processcommands and data by performing operations or by dispatching one or moreexecution threads to a graphics core array 3114. In at least oneembodiment graphics core array 3114 includes one or more blocks ofgraphics cores (e.g., graphics core(s) 3115A, graphics core(s) 3115B),each block including one or more graphics cores. In at least oneembodiment, each graphics core includes a set of graphics executionresources that includes general-purpose and graphics specific executionlogic to perform graphics and compute operations, as well as fixedfunction texture processing and/or machine learning and artificialintelligence acceleration logic, including inference and/or traininglogic 915 in FIG. 9A and FIG. 9B.

In at least one embodiment, 3D pipeline 3012 includes fixed function andprogrammable logic to process one or more shader programs, such asvertex shaders, geometry shaders, pixel shaders, fragment shaders,compute shaders, or other shader programs, by processing instructionsand dispatching execution threads to graphics core array 3114. In atleast one embodiment, graphics core array 3114 provides a unified blockof execution resources for use in processing shader programs. In atleast one embodiment, multi-purpose execution logic (e.g., executionunits) within graphics core(s) 3115A-3115B of graphic core array 3114includes support for various 3D API shader languages and can executemultiple simultaneous execution threads associated with multipleshaders.

In at least one embodiment, graphics core array 3114 also includesexecution logic to perform media functions, such as video and/or imageprocessing. In at least one embodiment, execution units additionallyinclude general-purpose logic that is programmable to perform parallelgeneral-purpose computational operations, in addition to graphicsprocessing operations.

In at least one embodiment, output data generated by threads executingon graphics core array 3114 can output data to memory in a unifiedreturn buffer (URB) 3118. URB 3118 can store data for multiple threads.In at least one embodiment, URB 3118 may be used to send data betweendifferent threads executing on graphics core array 3114. In at least oneembodiment, URB 3118 may additionally be used for synchronizationbetween threads on graphics core array 3114 and fixed function logicwithin shared function logic 3120.

In at least one embodiment, graphics core array 3114 is scalable, suchthat graphics core array 3114 includes a variable number of graphicscores, each having a variable number of execution units based on atarget power and performance level of GPE 3110. In at least oneembodiment, execution resources are dynamically scalable, such thatexecution resources may be enabled or disabled as needed.

In at least one embodiment, graphics core array 3114 is coupled toshared function logic 3120 that includes multiple resources that areshared between graphics cores in graphics core array 3114. In at leastone embodiment, shared functions performed by shared function logic 3120are embodied in hardware logic units that provide specializedsupplemental functionality to graphics core array 3114. In at least oneembodiment, shared function logic 3120 includes but is not limited tosampler 3121, math 3122, and inter-thread communication (ITC) 3123logic. In at least one embodiment, one or more cache(s) 3125 are inincluded in or couple to shared function logic 3120.

In at least one embodiment, a shared function is used if demand for aspecialized function is insufficient for inclusion within graphics corearray 3114. In at least one embodiment, a single instantiation of aspecialized function is used in shared function logic 3120 and sharedamong other execution resources within graphics core array 3114. In atleast one embodiment, specific shared functions within shared functionlogic 3120 that are used extensively by graphics core array 3114 may beincluded within shared function logic 3116 within graphics core array3114. In at least one embodiment, shared function logic 3116 withingraphics core array 3114 can include some or all logic within sharedfunction logic 3120. In at least one embodiment, all logic elementswithin shared function logic 3120 may be duplicated within sharedfunction logic 3116 of graphics core array 3114. In at least oneembodiment, shared function logic 3120 is excluded in favor of sharedfunction logic 3116 within graphics core array 3114.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment portions or all of inference and/or training logic 915 may beincorporated into graphics processor 3110. For example, in at least oneembodiment, training and/or inferencing techniques described herein mayuse one or more of ALUs embodied in 3D pipeline 3012, graphics core(s)3115A, shared function logic 3116, graphics core(s) 3115B, sharedfunction logic 3120, or other logic in FIG. 31 . Moreover, in at leastone embodiment, inferencing and/or training operations described hereinmay be done using logic other than logic illustrated in FIG. 9A or 9B.In at least one embodiment, weight parameters may be stored in on-chipor off-chip memory and/or registers (shown or not shown) that configureALUs of graphics processor 3110 to perform one or more machine learningalgorithms, neural network architectures, use cases, or trainingtechniques described herein.

FIG. 32 is a block diagram of hardware logic of a graphics processorcore 3200, according to at least one embodiment described herein. In atleast one embodiment, graphics processor core 3200 c3200, sometimesreferred to as a core slice, can be one or multiple graphics coreswithin a modular graphics processor. In at least one embodiment,graphics processor core 3200 is exemplary of one graphics core slice,and a graphics processor as described herein may include multiplegraphics core slices based on target power and performance envelopes. Inat least one embodiment, each graphics core 3200 can include a fixedfunction block 3230 coupled with multiple sub-cores 3201A-3201F, alsoreferred to as sub-slices, that include modular blocks ofgeneral-purpose and fixed function logic.

In at least one embodiment, fixed function block 3230 includes ageometry/fixed function pipeline 3236 that can be shared by allsub-cores in graphics processor 3200, for example, in lower performanceand/or lower power graphics processor implementations. In at least oneembodiment, geometry/fixed function pipeline 3236 includes a 3D fixedfunction pipeline, a video front-end unit, a thread spawner and threaddispatcher, and a unified return buffer manager, which manages unifiedreturn buffers.

In at least one embodiment fixed function block 3230 also includes agraphics SoC interface 3237, a graphics microcontroller 3238, and amedia pipeline 3239. Graphics SoC interface 3237 provides an interfacebetween graphics core 3200 and other processor cores within a system ona chip integrated circuit. In at least one embodiment, graphicsmicrocontroller 3238 is a programmable sub-processor that isconfigurable to manage various functions of graphics processor 3200,including thread dispatch, scheduling, and pre-emption. In at least oneembodiment, media pipeline 3239 includes logic to facilitate decoding,encoding, pre-processing, and/or post-processing of multimedia data,including image and video data. In at least one embodiment, mediapipeline 3239 implement media operations via requests to compute orsampling logic within sub-cores 3201-3201F.

In at least one embodiment, SoC interface 3237 enables graphics core3200 to communicate with general-purpose application processor cores(e.g., CPUs) and/or other components within an SoC, including memoryhierarchy elements such as a shared last level cache memory, system RAM,and/or embedded on-chip or on-package DRAM. In at least one embodiment,SoC interface 3237 can also enable communication with fixed functiondevices within an SoC, such as camera imaging pipelines, and enables useof and/or implements global memory atomics that may be shared betweengraphics core 3200 and CPUs within an SoC. In at least one embodiment,SoC interface 3237 can also implement power management controls forgraphics core 3200 and enable an interface between a clock domain ofgraphic core 3200 and other clock domains within an SoC. In at least oneembodiment, SoC interface 3237 enables receipt of command buffers from acommand streamer and global thread dispatcher that are configured toprovide commands and instructions to each of one or more graphics coreswithin a graphics processor. In at least one embodiment, commands andinstructions can be dispatched to media pipeline 3239, when mediaoperations are to be performed, or a geometry and fixed functionpipeline (e.g., geometry and fixed function pipeline 3236, geometry andfixed function pipeline 3214) when graphics processing operations are tobe performed.

In at least one embodiment, graphics microcontroller 3238 can beconfigured to perform various scheduling and management tasks forgraphics core 3200. In at least one embodiment, graphics microcontroller3238 can perform graphics and/or compute workload scheduling on variousgraphics parallel engines within execution unit (EU) arrays 3202A-3202F,3204A-3204F within sub-cores 3201A-3201F. In at least one embodiment,host software executing on a CPU core of a SoC including graphics core3200 can submit workloads one of multiple graphic processor doorbells,which invokes a scheduling operation on an appropriate graphics engine.In at least one embodiment, scheduling operations include determiningwhich workload to run next, submitting a workload to a command streamer,pre-empting existing workloads running on an engine, monitoring progressof a workload, and notifying host software when a workload is complete.In at least one embodiment, graphics microcontroller 3238 can alsofacilitate low-power or idle states for graphics core 3200, providinggraphics core 3200 with an ability to save and restore registers withingraphics core 3200 across low-power state transitions independently froman operating system and/or graphics driver software on a system.

In at least one embodiment, graphics core 3200 may have greater than orfewer than illustrated sub-cores 3201A-3201F, up to N modular sub-cores.For each set of N sub-cores, in at least one embodiment, graphics core3200 can also include shared function logic 3210, shared and/or cachememory 3212, a geometry/fixed function pipeline 3214, as well asadditional fixed function logic 3216 to accelerate various graphics andcompute processing operations. In at least one embodiment, sharedfunction logic 3210 can include logic units (e.g., sampler, math, and/orinter-thread communication logic) that can be shared by each N sub-coreswithin graphics core 3200. Shared and/or cache memory 3212 can be alast-level cache for N sub-cores 3201A-3201F within graphics core 3200and can also serve as shared memory that is accessible by multiplesub-cores. In at least one embodiment, geometry/fixed function pipeline3214 can be included instead of geometry/fixed function pipeline 3236within fixed function block 3230 and can include same or similar logicunits.

In at least one embodiment, graphics core 3200 includes additional fixedfunction logic 3216 that can include various fixed function accelerationlogic for use by graphics core 3200. In at least one embodiment,additional fixed function logic 3216 includes an additional geometrypipeline for use in position only shading. In position-only shading, atleast two geometry pipelines exist, whereas in a full geometry pipelinewithin geometry/fixed function pipeline 3216, 3236, and a cull pipeline,which is an additional geometry pipeline which may be included withinadditional fixed function logic 3216. In at least one embodiment, cullpipeline is a trimmed down version of a full geometry pipeline. In atleast one embodiment, a full pipeline and a cull pipeline can executedifferent instances of an application, each instance having a separatecontext. In at least one embodiment, position only shading can hide longcull runs of discarded triangles, enabling shading to be completedearlier in some instances. For example, in at least one embodiment, cullpipeline logic within additional fixed function logic 3216 can executeposition shaders in parallel with a main application and generallygenerates critical results faster than a full pipeline, as cull pipelinefetches and shades position attribute of vertices, without performingrasterization and rendering of pixels to a frame buffer. In at least oneembodiment, cull pipeline can use generated critical results to computevisibility information for all triangles without regard to whether thosetriangles are culled. In at least one embodiment, full pipeline (whichin this instance may be referred to as a replay pipeline) can consumevisibility information to skip culled triangles to shade only visibletriangles that are finally passed to a rasterization phase.

In at least one embodiment, additional fixed function logic 3216 canalso include machine-learning acceleration logic, such as fixed functionmatrix multiplication logic, for implementations including optimizationsfor machine learning training or inferencing.

In at least one embodiment, within each graphics sub-core 3201A-3201Fincludes a set of execution resources that may be used to performgraphics, media, and compute operations in response to requests bygraphics pipeline, media pipeline, or shader programs. In at least oneembodiment, graphics sub-cores 3201A-3201F include multiple EU arrays3202A-3202F, 3204A-3204F, thread dispatch and inter-thread communication(TD/IC) logic 3203A-3203F, a 3D (e.g., texture) sampler 3205A-3205F, amedia sampler 3206A-3206F, a shader processor 3207A-3207F, and sharedlocal memory (SLM) 3208A-3208F. EU arrays 3202A-3202F, 3204A-3204F eachinclude multiple execution units, which are general-purpose graphicsprocessing units capable of performing floating-point andinteger/fixed-point logic operations in service of a graphics, media, orcompute operation, including graphics, media, or compute shaderprograms. In at least one embodiment, TD/IC logic 3203A-3203F performslocal thread dispatch and thread control operations for execution unitswithin a sub-core and facilitate communication between threads executingon execution units of a sub-core. In at least one embodiment, 3D sampler3205A-3205F can read texture or other 3D graphics related data intomemory. In at least one embodiment, 3D sampler can read texture datadifferently based on a configured sample state and texture formatassociated with a given texture. In at least one embodiment, mediasampler 3206A-3206F can perform similar read operations based on a typeand format associated with media data. In at least one embodiment, eachgraphics sub-core 3201A-3201F can alternately include a unified 3D andmedia sampler. In at least one embodiment, threads executing onexecution units within each of sub-cores 3201A-3201F can make use ofshared local memory 3208A-3208F within each sub-core, to enable threadsexecuting within a thread group to execute using a common pool ofon-chip memory.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, portions or all of inference and/or training logic 915 maybe incorporated into graphics processor 3210. For example, in at leastone embodiment, training and/or inferencing techniques described hereinmay use one or more of ALUs embodied in 3D pipeline 3210, graphicsmicrocontroller 3238, geometry & fixed function pipeline 3214 and 3236,or other logic in FIG. 29 . Moreover, in at least one embodiment,inferencing and/or training operations described herein may be doneusing logic other than logic illustrated in FIG. 9A or 9B. In at leastone embodiment, weight parameters may be stored in on-chip or off-chipmemory and/or registers (shown or not shown) that configure ALUs ofgraphics processor 3200 to perform one or more machine learningalgorithms, neural network architectures, use cases, or trainingtechniques described herein.

FIGS. 33A-33B illustrate thread execution logic 3300 including an arrayof processing elements of a graphics processor core according to atleast one embodiment. FIG. 33A illustrates at least one embodiment, inwhich thread execution logic 3300 is used. FIG. 33B c

As illustrated in FIG. 33A, in at least one embodiment, thread executionlogic 3300 includes a shader processor 3302, a thread dispatcher 3304,instruction cache 3306, a scalable execution unit array including aplurality of execution units 3308A-3308N, a sampler 3310, a data cache3312, and a data port 3314. In at least one embodiment a scalableexecution unit array can dynamically scale by enabling or disabling oneor more execution units (e.g., any of execution unit 3308A, 3308B,3308C, 3308D, through 3308N-1 and 3308N) based on computationalrequirements of a workload, for example. In at least one embodiment,scalable execution units are interconnected via an interconnect fabricthat links to each of execution unit. In at least one embodiment, threadexecution logic 3300 includes one or more connections to memory, such assystem memory or cache memory, through one or more of instruction cache3306, data port 3314, sampler 3310, and execution units 3308A-3308N. Inat least one embodiment, each execution unit (e.g., 3308A) is astand-alone programmable general-purpose computational unit that iscapable of executing multiple simultaneous hardware threads whileprocessing multiple data elements in parallel for each thread. In atleast one embodiment, array of execution units 3308A-3308N is scalableto include any number individual execution units.

In at least one embodiment, execution units 3308A-3308N are primarilyused to execute shader programs. In at least one embodiment, shaderprocessor 3302 can process various shader programs and dispatchexecution threads associated with shader programs via a threaddispatcher 3304. In at least one embodiment, thread dispatcher 3304includes logic to arbitrate thread initiation requests from graphics andmedia pipelines and instantiate requested threads on one or moreexecution units in execution units 3308A-3308N. For example, in at leastone embodiment, a geometry pipeline can dispatch vertex, tessellation,or geometry shaders to thread execution logic for processing. In atleast one embodiment, thread dispatcher 3304 can also process runtimethread spawning requests from executing shader programs.

In at least one embodiment, execution units 3308A-3308N support aninstruction set that includes native support for many standard 3Dgraphics shader instructions, such that shader programs from graphicslibraries (e.g., Direct 3D and OpenGL) are executed with a minimaltranslation. In at least one embodiment, execution units support vertexand geometry processing (e.g., vertex programs, geometry programs,vertex shaders), pixel processing (e.g., pixel shaders, fragmentshaders) and general-purpose processing (e.g., compute and mediashaders). In at least one embodiment, each of execution units3308A-3308N, which include one or more arithmetic logic units (ALUs), iscapable of multi-issue single instruction multiple data (SIMD) executionand multi-threaded operation enables an efficient execution environmentdespite higher latency memory accesses. In at least one embodiment, eachhardware thread within each execution unit has a dedicatedhigh-bandwidth register file and associated independent thread-state. Inat least one embodiment, execution is multi-issue per clock to pipelinescapable of integer, single and double precision floating pointoperations, SIMD branch capability, logical operations, transcendentaloperations, and other miscellaneous operations. In at least oneembodiment, while waiting for data from memory or one of sharedfunctions, dependency logic within execution units 3308A-3308N causes awaiting thread to sleep until requested data has been returned. In atleast one embodiment, while a waiting thread is sleeping, hardwareresources may be devoted to processing other threads. For example, in atleast one embodiment, during a delay associated with a vertex shaderoperation, an execution unit can perform operations for a pixel shader,fragment shader, or another type of shader program, including adifferent vertex shader.

In at least one embodiment, each execution unit in execution units3308A-3308N operates on arrays of data elements. In at least oneembodiment, a number of data elements is “execution size,” or number ofchannels for an instruction. In at least one embodiment, an executionchannel is a logical unit of execution for data element access, masking,and flow control within instructions. In at least one embodiment, anumber of channels may be independent of a number of physical ArithmeticLogic Units (ALUs) or Floating Point Units (FPUs) for a particulargraphics processor. In at least one embodiment, execution units3308A-3308N support integer and floating-point data types.

In at least one embodiment, an execution unit instruction set includesSIMD instructions. In at least one embodiment, various data elements canbe stored as a packed data type in a register and execution unit willprocess various elements based on data size of elements. For example, inat least one embodiment, when operating on a 256-bit wide vector, 256bits of a vector are stored in a register and an execution unit operateson a vector as four separate 64-bit packed data elements (Quad-Word (QW)size data elements), eight separate 32-bit packed data elements (DoubleWord (DW) size data elements), sixteen separate 16-bit packed dataelements (Word (W) size data elements), or thirty-two separate 8-bitdata elements (byte (B) size data elements). However, in at least oneembodiment, different vector widths and register sizes are possible.

In at least one embodiment, one or more execution units can be combinedinto a fused execution unit 3309A-3309N having thread control logic(3307A-3307N) that is common to fused EUs. In at least one embodiment,multiple EUs can be fused into an EU group. In at least one embodiment,each EU in fused EU group can be configured to execute a separate SIMDhardware thread. The number of EUs in a fused EU group can varyaccording to various embodiments. In at least one embodiment, variousSIMD widths can be performed per-EU, including but not limited to SIMD8,SIMD16, and SIMD32. In at least one embodiment, each fused graphicsexecution unit 3309A-3309N includes at least two execution units. Forexample, in at least one embodiment, fused execution unit 3309A includesa first EU 3308A, second EU 3308B, and thread control logic 3307A thatis common to first EU 3308A and second EU 3308B. In at least oneembodiment, thread control logic 3307A controls threads executed onfused graphics execution unit 3309A, allowing each EU within fusedexecution units 3309A-3309N to execute using a common instructionpointer register.

In at least one embodiment, one or more internal instruction caches(e.g., 3306) are included in thread execution logic 3300 to cache threadinstructions for execution units. In at least one embodiment, one ormore data caches (e.g., 3312) are included to cache thread data duringthread execution. In at least one embodiment, a sampler 3310 is includedto provide texture sampling for 3D operations and media sampling formedia operations. In at least one embodiment, sampler 3310 includesspecialized texture or media sampling functionality to process textureor media data during sampling process before providing sampled data toan execution unit.

During execution, in at least one embodiment, graphics and mediapipelines send thread initiation requests to thread execution logic 3300via thread spawning and dispatch logic. In at least one embodiment, oncea group of geometric objects has been processed and rasterized intopixel data, pixel processor logic (e.g., pixel shader logic, fragmentshader logic, etc.) within shader processor 3302 is invoked to furthercompute output information and cause results to be written to outputsurfaces (e.g., color buffers, depth buffers, stencil buffers, etc.). Inat least one embodiment, a pixel shader or fragment shader calculatesvalues of various vertex attributes that are to be interpolated across arasterized object. In at least one embodiment, pixel processor logicwithin shader processor 3302 then executes an application programminginterface (API)-supplied pixel or fragment shader program. In at leastone embodiment, to execute a shader program, shader processor 3302dispatches threads to an execution unit (e.g., 3308A) via threaddispatcher 3304. In at least one embodiment, shader processor 3302 usestexture sampling logic in sampler 3310 to access texture data in texturemaps stored in memory. In at least one embodiment, arithmetic operationson texture data and input geometry data compute pixel color data foreach geometric fragment, or discards one or more pixels from furtherprocessing.

In at least one embodiment, data port 3314 provides a memory accessmechanism for thread execution logic 3300 to output processed data tomemory for further processing on a graphics processor output pipeline.In at least one embodiment, data port 3314 includes or couples to one ormore cache memories (e.g., data cache 3312) to cache data for memoryaccess via a data port.

As illustrated in FIG. 33B, in at least one embodiment, a graphicsexecution unit 3308 can include an instruction fetch unit 3337, ageneral register file array (GRF) 3324, an architectural register filearray (ARF) 3326, a thread arbiter 3322, a send unit 3330, a branch unit3332, a set of SIMD floating point units (FPUs) 3334, and In at leastone embodiment a set of dedicated integer SIMD ALUs 3335. In at leastone embodiment, GRF 3324 and ARF 3326 includes a set of general registerfiles and architecture register files associated with each simultaneoushardware thread that may be active in graphics execution unit 3308. Inat least one embodiment, per thread architectural state is maintained inARF 3326, while data used during thread execution is stored in GRF 3324.In at least one embodiment, execution state of each thread, includinginstruction pointers for each thread, can be held in thread-specificregisters in ARF 3326.

In at least one embodiment, graphics execution unit 3308 has anarchitecture that is a combination of Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT)and fine-grained Interleaved Multi-Threading (IMT). In at least oneembodiment, architecture has a modular configuration that can befine-tuned at design time based on a target number of simultaneousthreads and number of registers per execution unit, where execution unitresources are divided across logic used to execute multiple simultaneousthreads.

In at least one embodiment, graphics execution unit 3308 can co-issuemultiple instructions, which may each be different instructions. In atleast one embodiment, thread arbiter 3322 of graphics execution unitthread 3308 can dispatch instructions to one of send unit 3330, branchunit 3342, or SIMD FPU(s) 3334 for execution. In at least oneembodiment, each execution thread can access 128 general-purposeregisters within GRF 3324, where each register can store 32 bytes,accessible as a SIMD 8-element vector of 32-bit data elements. In atleast one embodiment, each execution unit thread has access to 4 Kbyteswithin GRF 3324, although embodiments are not so limited, and greater orfewer register resources may be provided in other embodiments. In atleast one embodiment, up to seven threads can execute simultaneously,although a number of threads per execution unit can also vary accordingto embodiments. In at least one embodiment, in which seven threads mayaccess 4 Kbytes, GRF 3324 can store a total of 28 Kbytes. In at leastone embodiment, flexible addressing modes can permit registers to beaddressed together to build effectively wider registers or to representstrided rectangular block data structures.

In at least one embodiment, memory operations, sampler operations, andother longer-latency system communications are dispatched via “send”instructions that are executed by message passing send unit 3330. In atleast one embodiment, branch instructions are dispatched to a dedicatedbranch unit 3332 to facilitate SIMD divergence and eventual convergence.

In at least one embodiment graphics execution unit 3308 includes one ormore SIMD floating point units (FPU(s)) 3334 to perform floating-pointoperations. In at least one embodiment, FPU(s) 3334 also support integercomputation. In at least one embodiment FPU(s) 3334 can SIMD execute upto M number of 32-bit floating-point (or integer) operations, or SIMDexecute up to 2M 16-bit integer or 16-bit floating-point operations. Inat least one embodiment, at least one of FPU(s) provides extended mathcapability to support high-throughput transcendental math functions anddouble precision 64-bit floating-point. In at least one embodiment, aset of 8-bit integer SIMD ALUs 3335 are also present, and may bespecifically optimized to perform operations associated with machinelearning computations.

In at least one embodiment, arrays of multiple instances of graphicsexecution unit 3308 can be instantiated in a graphics sub-core grouping(e.g., a sub-slice). In at least one embodiment execution unit 3308 canexecute instructions across a plurality of execution channels. In atleast one embodiment, each thread executed on graphics execution unit3308 is executed on a different channel.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, portions or all of inference and/or training logic 915 maybe incorporated into execution logic 3300. Moreover, in at least oneembodiment, inferencing and/or training operations described herein maybe done using logic other than logic illustrated in FIG. 9A or 9B. In atleast one embodiment, weight parameters may be stored in on-chip oroff-chip memory and/or registers (shown or not shown) that configureALUs of execution logic 3300 to perform one or more machine learningalgorithms, neural network architectures, use cases, or trainingtechniques described herein.

FIG. 34 illustrates a parallel processing unit (“PPU”) 3400, accordingto at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, PPU 3400 isconfigured with machine-readable code that, if executed by PPU 3400,causes PPU 3400 to perform some or all of processes and techniquesdescribed throughout this disclosure. In at least one embodiment, PPU3400 is a multi-threaded processor that is implemented on one or moreintegrated circuit devices and that utilizes multithreading as alatency-hiding technique designed to process computer-readableinstructions (also referred to as machine-readable instructions orsimply instructions) on multiple threads in parallel. In at least oneembodiment, a thread refers to a thread of execution and is aninstantiation of a set of instructions configured to be executed by PPU3400. In at least one embodiment, PPU 3400 is a graphics processing unit(“GPU”) configured to implement a graphics rendering pipeline forprocessing three-dimensional (“3D”) graphics data in order to generatetwo-dimensional (“2D”) image data for display on a display device suchas a liquid crystal display (“LCD”) device. In at least one embodiment,PPU 3400 is utilized to perform computations such as linear algebraoperations and machine-learning operations. FIG. 34 illustrates anexample parallel processor for illustrative purposes only and should beconstrued as a non-limiting example of processor architecturescontemplated within scope of this disclosure and that any suitableprocessor may be employed to supplement and/or substitute for same.

In at least one embodiment, one or more PPUs 3400 are configured toaccelerate High Performance Computing (“HPC”), data center, and machinelearning applications. In at least one embodiment, PPU 3400 isconfigured to accelerate deep learning systems and applicationsincluding following non-limiting examples: autonomous vehicle platforms,deep learning, high-accuracy speech, image, text recognition systems,intelligent video analytics, molecular simulations, drug discovery,disease diagnosis, weather forecasting, big data analytics, astronomy,molecular dynamics simulation, financial modeling, robotics, factoryautomation, real-time language translation, online search optimizations,and personalized user recommendations, and more.

In at least one embodiment, PPU 3400 includes, without limitation, anInput/Output (“I/O”) unit 3406, a front-end unit 3410, a scheduler unit3412, a work distribution unit 3414, a hub 3416, a crossbar (“Xbar”)3420, one or more general processing clusters (“GPCs”) 3418, and one ormore partition units (“memory partition units”) 3422. In at least oneembodiment, PPU 3400 is connected to a host processor or other PPUs 3400via one or more high-speed GPU interconnects (“GPU interconnects”) 3408.In at least one embodiment, PPU 3400 is connected to a host processor orother peripheral devices via an interconnect 3402. In at least oneembodiment, PPU 3400 is connected to a local memory comprising one ormore memory devices (“memory”) 3404. In at least one embodiment, memorydevices 3404 include, without limitation, one or more dynamic randomaccess memory (“DRAM”) devices. In at least one embodiment, one or moreDRAM devices are configured and/or configurable as high-bandwidth memory(“HBM”) subsystems, with multiple DRAM dies stacked within each device.

In at least one embodiment, high-speed GPU interconnect 3408 may referto a wire-based multi-lane communications link that is used by systemsto scale and include one or more PPUs 3400 combined with one or morecentral processing units (“CPUs”), supports cache coherence between PPUs3400 and CPUs, and CPU mastering. In at least one embodiment, dataand/or commands are transmitted by high-speed GPU interconnect 3408through hub 3416 to/from other units of PPU 3400 such as one or morecopy engines, video encoders, video decoders, power management units,and other components which may not be explicitly illustrated in FIG. 34.

In at least one embodiment, I/O unit 3406 is configured to transmit andreceive communications (e.g., commands, data) from a host processor (notillustrated in FIG. 34 ) over system bus 3402. In at least oneembodiment, I/O unit 3406 communicates with host processor directly viasystem bus 3402 or through one or more intermediate devices such as amemory bridge. In at least one embodiment, I/O unit 3406 may communicatewith one or more other processors, such as one or more of PPUs 3400 viasystem bus 3402. In at least one embodiment, I/O unit 3406 implements aPeripheral Component Interconnect Express (“PCIe”) interface forcommunications over a PCIe bus. In at least one embodiment, I/O unit3406 implements interfaces for communicating with external devices.

In at least one embodiment, I/O unit 3406 decodes packets received viasystem bus 3402. In at least one embodiment, at least some packetsrepresent commands configured to cause PPU 3400 to perform variousoperations. In at least one embodiment, I/O unit 3406 transmits decodedcommands to various other units of PPU 3400 as specified by commands. Inat least one embodiment, commands are transmitted to front-end unit 3410and/or transmitted to hub 3416 or other units of PPU 3400 such as one ormore copy engines, a video encoder, a video decoder, a power managementunit, etc. (not explicitly illustrated in FIG. 34 ). In at least oneembodiment, I/O unit 3406 is configured to route communications betweenand among various logical units of PPU 3400.

In at least one embodiment, a program executed by host processor encodesa command stream in a buffer that provides workloads to PPU 3400 forprocessing. In at least one embodiment, a workload comprisesinstructions and data to be processed by those instructions. In at leastone embodiment, buffer is a region in a memory that is accessible (e.g.,read/write) by both host processor and PPU 3400—a host interface unitmay be configured to access buffer in a system memory connected tosystem bus 3402 via memory requests transmitted over system bus 3402 byI/O unit 3406. In at least one embodiment, host processor writes commandstream to buffer and then transmits a pointer to start of command streamto PPU 3400 such that front-end unit 3410 receives pointers to one ormore command streams and manages one or more command streams, readingcommands from command streams and forwarding commands to various unitsof PPU 3400.

In at least one embodiment, front-end unit 3410 is coupled to schedulerunit 3412 that configures various GPCs 3418 to process tasks defined byone or more command streams. In at least one embodiment, scheduler unit3412 is configured to track state information related to various tasksmanaged by scheduler unit 3412 where state information may indicatewhich of GPCs 3418 a task is assigned to, whether task is active orinactive, a priority level associated with task, and so forth. In atleast one embodiment, scheduler unit 3412 manages execution of aplurality of tasks on one or more of GPCs 3418.

In at least one embodiment, scheduler unit 3412 is coupled to workdistribution unit 3414 that is configured to dispatch tasks forexecution on GPCs 3418. In at least one embodiment, work distributionunit 3414 tracks a number of scheduled tasks received from schedulerunit 3412 and work distribution unit 3414 manages a pending task pooland an active task pool for each of GPCs 3418. In at least oneembodiment, pending task pool comprises a number of slots (e.g., 32slots) that contain tasks assigned to be processed by a particular GPC3418; active task pool may comprise a number of slots (e.g., 4 slots)for tasks that are actively being processed by GPCs 3418 such that asone of GPCs 3418 completes execution of a task, that task is evictedfrom active task pool for GPC 3418 and one of other tasks from pendingtask pool is selected and scheduled for execution on GPC 3418. In atleast one embodiment, if an active task is idle on GPC 3418, such aswhile waiting for a data dependency to be resolved, then active task isevicted from GPC 3418 and returned to pending task pool while anothertask in pending task pool is selected and scheduled for execution on GPC3418.

In at least one embodiment, work distribution unit 3414 communicateswith one or more GPCs 3418 via XBar 3420. In at least one embodiment,XBar 3420 is an interconnect network that couples many of units of PPU3400 to other units of PPU 3400 and can be configured to couple workdistribution unit 3414 to a particular GPC 3418. In at least oneembodiment, one or more other units of PPU 3400 may also be connected toXBar 3420 via hub 3416.

In at least one embodiment, tasks are managed by scheduler unit 3412 anddispatched to one of GPCs 3418 by work distribution unit 3414. GPC 3418is configured to process task and generate results. In at least oneembodiment, results may be consumed by other tasks within GPC 3418,routed to a different GPC 3418 via XBar 3420, or stored in memory 3404.In at least one embodiment, results can be written to memory 3404 viapartition units 3422, which implement a memory interface for reading andwriting data to/from memory 3404. In at least one embodiment, resultscan be transmitted to another PPU 3404 or CPU via high-speed GPUinterconnect 3408. In at least one embodiment, PPU 3400 includes,without limitation, a number U of partition units 3422 that is equal tonumber of separate and distinct memory devices 3404 coupled to PPU 3400.In at least one embodiment, partition unit 3422 will be described inmore detail herein in conjunction with FIG. 36 .

In at least one embodiment, a host processor executes a driver kernelthat implements an application programming interface (“API”) thatenables one or more applications executing on host processor to scheduleoperations for execution on PPU 3400. In at least one embodiment,multiple compute applications are simultaneously executed by PPU 3400and PPU 3400 provides isolation, quality of service (“QoS”), andindependent address spaces for multiple compute applications. In atleast one embodiment, an application generates instructions (e.g., inform of API calls) that cause driver kernel to generate one or moretasks for execution by PPU 3400 and driver kernel outputs tasks to oneor more streams being processed by PPU 3400. In at least one embodiment,each task comprises one or more groups of related threads, which may bereferred to as a warp. In at least one embodiment, a warp comprises aplurality of related threads (e.g., 32 threads) that can be executed inparallel. In at least one embodiment, cooperating threads can refer to aplurality of threads including instructions to perform task and thatexchange data through shared memory. In at least one embodiment, threadsand cooperating threads are described in more detail, in accordance withat least one embodiment, in conjunction with FIG. 36 .

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, deep learning application processor is used to train amachine learning model, such as a neural network, to predict or inferinformation provided to PPU 3400. In at least one embodiment, deeplearning application processor 3400 is used to infer or predictinformation based on a trained machine learning model (e.g., neuralnetwork) that has been trained by another processor or system or by PPU3400. In at least one embodiment, PPU 3400 may be used to perform one ormore neural network use cases described herein.

FIG. 35 illustrates a general processing cluster (“GPC”) 3500, accordingto at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, GPC 3500 is GPC3418 of FIG. 34 . In at least one embodiment, each GPC 3500 includes,without limitation, a number of hardware units for processing tasks andeach GPC 3500 includes, without limitation, a pipeline manager 3502, apre-raster operations unit (“PROP”) 3504, a raster engine 3508, a workdistribution crossbar (“WDX”) 3516, a memory management unit (“MMU”)3518, one or more Data Processing Clusters (“DPCs”) 3506, and anysuitable combination of parts.

In at least one embodiment, operation of GPC 3500 is controlled bypipeline manager 3502. In at least one embodiment, pipeline manager 3502manages configuration of one or more DPCs 3506 for processing tasksallocated to GPC 3500. In at least one embodiment, pipeline manager 3502configures at least one of one or more DPCs 3506 to implement at least aportion of a graphics rendering pipeline. In at least one embodiment,DPC 3506 is configured to execute a vertex shader program on aprogrammable streaming multi-processor (“SM”) 3514. In at least oneembodiment, pipeline manager 3502 is configured to route packetsreceived from a work distribution unit to appropriate logical unitswithin GPC 3500, in at least one embodiment, and some packets may berouted to fixed function hardware units in PROP 3504 and/or rasterengine 3508 while other packets may be routed to DPCs 3506 forprocessing by a primitive engine 3512 or SM 3514. In at least oneembodiment, pipeline manager 3502 configures at least one of DPCs 3506to implement a neural network model and/or a computing pipeline.

In at least one embodiment, PROP unit 3504 is configured, in at leastone embodiment, to route data generated by raster engine 3508 and DPCs3506 to a Raster Operations (“ROP”) unit in partition unit 3422,described in more detail above in conjunction with FIG. 34 . In at leastone embodiment, PROP unit 3504 is configured to perform optimizationsfor color blending, organize pixel data, perform address translations,and more. In at least one embodiment, raster engine 3508 includes,without limitation, a number of fixed function hardware units configuredto perform various raster operations, in at least one embodiment, andraster engine 3508 includes, without limitation, a setup engine, acoarse raster engine, a culling engine, a clipping engine, a fine rasterengine, a tile coalescing engine, and any suitable combination thereof.In at least one embodiment, setup engine receives transformed verticesand generates plane equations associated with geometric primitivedefined by vertices; plane equations are transmitted to coarse rasterengine to generate coverage information (e.g., an x, y coverage mask fora tile) for primitive; output of coarse raster engine is transmitted toculling engine where fragments associated with primitive that fail az-test are culled, and transmitted to a clipping engine where fragmentslying outside a viewing frustum are clipped. In at least one embodiment,fragments that survive clipping and culling are passed to fine rasterengine to generate attributes for pixel fragments based on planeequations generated by setup engine. In at least one embodiment, outputof raster engine 3508 comprises fragments to be processed by anysuitable entity such as by a fragment shader implemented within DPC3506.

In at least one embodiment, each DPC 3506 included in GPC 3500 comprise,without limitation, an M-Pipe Controller (“MPC”) 3510; primitive engine3512; one or more SMs 3514; and any suitable combination thereof. In atleast one embodiment, MPC 3510 controls operation of DPC 3506, routingpackets received from pipeline manager 3502 to appropriate units in DPC3506. In at least one embodiment, packets associated with a vertex arerouted to primitive engine 3512, which is configured to fetch vertexattributes associated with vertex from memory; in contrast, packetsassociated with a shader program may be transmitted to SM 3514.

In at least one embodiment, SM 3514 comprises, without limitation, aprogrammable streaming processor that is configured to process tasksrepresented by a number of threads. In at least one embodiment, SM 3514is multi-threaded and configured to execute a plurality of threads(e.g., 32 threads) from a particular group of threads concurrently andimplements a Single-Instruction, Multiple-Data (“SIMD”) architecturewhere each thread in a group of threads (e.g., a warp) is configured toprocess a different set of data based on same set of instructions. In atleast one embodiment, all threads in group of threads execute sameinstructions. In at least one embodiment, SM 3514 implements aSingle-Instruction, Multiple Thread (“SIMT”) architecture wherein eachthread in a group of threads is configured to process a different set ofdata based on same set of instructions, but where individual threads ingroup of threads are allowed to diverge during execution. In at leastone embodiment, a program counter, call stack, and execution state ismaintained for each warp, enabling concurrency between warps and serialexecution within warps when threads within warp diverge. In anotherembodiment, a program counter, call stack, and execution state ismaintained for each individual thread, enabling equal concurrencybetween all threads, within and between warps. In at least oneembodiment, execution state is maintained for each individual thread andthreads executing same instructions may be converged and executed inparallel for better efficiency. At least one embodiment of SM 3514 aredescribed in more detail herein.

In at least one embodiment, MMU 3518 provides an interface between GPC3500 and memory partition unit (e.g., partition unit 3422 of FIG. 34 )and MMU 3518 provides translation of virtual addresses into physicaladdresses, memory protection, and arbitration of memory requests. In atleast one embodiment, MMU 3518 provides one or more translationlookaside buffers (“TLBs”) for performing translation of virtualaddresses into physical addresses in memory.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, deep learning application processor is used to train amachine learning model, such as a neural network, to predict or inferinformation provided to GPC 3500. In at least one embodiment, GPC 3500is used to infer or predict information based on a trained machinelearning model (e.g., neural network) that has been trained by anotherprocessor or system or by GPC 3500. In at least one embodiment, GPC 3500may be used to perform one or more neural network use cases describedherein.

FIG. 36 illustrates a memory partition unit 3600 of a parallelprocessing unit (“PPU”), in accordance with at least one embodiment. Inat least one embodiment, memory partition unit 3600 includes, withoutlimitation, a Raster Operations (“ROP”) unit 3602; a level two (“L2”)cache 3604; a memory interface 3606; and any suitable combinationthereof. Memory interface 3606 is coupled to memory. Memory interface3606 may implement 32, 64, 128, 1024-bit data buses, or like, forhigh-speed data transfer. In at least one embodiment, PPU incorporates Umemory interfaces 3606, one memory interface 3606 per pair of partitionunits 3600, where each pair of partition units 3600 is connected to acorresponding memory device. For example, in at least one embodiment,PPU may be connected to up to Y memory devices, such as high bandwidthmemory stacks or graphics double-data-rate, version 5, synchronousdynamic random access memory (“GDDR5 SDRAM”).

In at least one embodiment, memory interface 3606 implements a highbandwidth memory second generation (“HBM2”) memory interface and Yequals half U. In at least one embodiment, HBM2 memory stacks arelocated on same physical package as PPU, providing substantial power andarea savings compared with conventional GDDR5 SDRAM systems. In at leastone embodiment, each HBM2 stack includes, without limitation, fourmemory dies and Y equals 4, with each HBM2 stack including two 128-bitchannels per die for a total of 8 channels and a data bus width of 1024bits. In at least one embodiment, memory supports Single-ErrorCorrecting Double-Error Detecting (“SECDED”) Error Correction Code(“ECC”) to protect data. ECC provides higher reliability for computeapplications that are sensitive to data corruption.

In at least one embodiment, PPU implements a multi-level memoryhierarchy. In at least one embodiment, memory partition unit 3600supports a unified memory to provide a single unified virtual addressspace for central processing unit (“CPU”) and PPU memory, enabling datasharing between virtual memory systems. In at least one embodimentfrequency of accesses by a PPU to memory located on other processors istraced to ensure that memory pages are moved to physical memory of PPUthat is accessing pages more frequently. In at least one embodiment,high-speed GPU interconnect 3408 supports address translation servicesallowing PPU to directly access a CPU's page tables and providing fullaccess to CPU memory by PPU.

In at least one embodiment, copy engines transfer data between multiplePPUs or between PPUs and CPUs. In at least one embodiment, copy enginescan generate page faults for addresses that are not mapped into pagetables and memory partition unit 3600 then services page faults, mappingaddresses into page table, after which copy engine performs transfer. Inat least one embodiment, memory is pinned (i.e., non-pageable) formultiple copy engine operations between multiple processors,substantially reducing available memory. In at least one embodiment,with hardware page faulting, addresses can be passed to copy engineswithout regard as to whether memory pages are resident, and copy processis transparent.

Data from memory 3404 of FIG. 34 or other system memory is fetched bymemory partition unit 3600 and stored in L2 cache 3604, which is locatedon-chip and is shared between various GPCs, in accordance with at leastone embodiment. Each memory partition unit 3600, in at least oneembodiment, includes, without limitation, at least a portion of L2 cacheassociated with a corresponding memory device. In at least oneembodiment, lower level caches are implemented in various units withinGPCs. In at least one embodiment, each of SMs 3514 may implement a levelone (“L1”) cache wherein L1 cache is private memory that is dedicated toa particular SM 3514 and data from L2 cache 3604 is fetched and storedin each of L1 caches for processing in functional units of SMs 3514. Inat least one embodiment, L2 cache 3604 is coupled to memory interface3606 and XBar 3420.

ROP unit 3602 performs graphics raster operations related to pixelcolor, such as color compression, pixel blending, and more, in at leastone embodiment. ROP unit 3602, in at least one embodiment, implementsdepth testing in conjunction with raster engine 3508, receiving a depthfor a sample location associated with a pixel fragment from cullingengine of raster engine 3508. In at least one embodiment, depth istested against a corresponding depth in a depth buffer for a samplelocation associated with fragment. In at least one embodiment, iffragment passes depth test for sample location, then ROP unit 3602updates depth buffer and transmits a result of depth test to rasterengine 3508. It will be appreciated that number of partition units 3600may be different than number of GPCs and, therefore, each ROP unit 3602can, in at least one embodiment, be coupled to each of GPCs. In at leastone embodiment, ROP unit 3602 tracks packets received from differentGPCs and determines which that a result generated by ROP unit 3602 isrouted to through XBar 3420.

FIG. 37 illustrates a streaming multi-processor (“SM”) 3700, accordingto at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, SM 3700 is SM ofFIG. 35 . In at least one embodiment, SM 3700 includes, withoutlimitation, an instruction cache 3702; one or more scheduler units 3704;a register file 3708; one or more processing cores (“cores”) 3710; oneor more special function units (“SFUs”) 3712; one or more load/storeunits (“LSUs”) 3714; an interconnect network 3716; a shared memory/levelone (“L1”) cache 3718; and any suitable combination thereof. In at leastone embodiment, a work distribution unit dispatches tasks for executionon general processing clusters (“GPCs”) of parallel processing units(“PPUs”) and each task is allocated to a particular Data ProcessingCluster (“DPC”) within a GPC and, if task is associated with a shaderprogram, task is allocated to one of SMs 3700. In at least oneembodiment, scheduler unit 3704 receives tasks from work distributionunit and manages instruction scheduling for one or more thread blocksassigned to SM 3700. In at least one embodiment, scheduler unit 3704schedules thread blocks for execution as warps of parallel threads,wherein each thread block is allocated at least one warp. In at leastone embodiment, each warp executes threads. In at least one embodiment,scheduler unit 3704 manages a plurality of different thread blocks,allocating warps to different thread blocks and then dispatchinginstructions from plurality of different cooperative groups to variousfunctional units (e.g., processing cores 3710, SFUs 3712, and LSUs 3714)during each clock cycle.

In at least one embodiment, Cooperative Groups may refer to aprogramming model for organizing groups of communicating threads thatallows developers to express granularity at which threads arecommunicating, enabling expression of richer, more efficient paralleldecompositions. In at least one embodiment, cooperative launch APIssupport synchronization amongst thread blocks for execution of parallelalgorithms. In at least one embodiment, applications of conventionalprogramming models provide a single, simple construct for synchronizingcooperating threads: a barrier across all threads of a thread block(e.g., syncthreads( ) function). However, in at least one embodiment,programmers may define groups of threads at smaller than thread blockgranularities and synchronize within defined groups to enable greaterperformance, design flexibility, and software reuse in form ofcollective group-wide function interfaces. In at least one embodiment,Cooperative Groups enables programmers to define groups of threadsexplicitly at sub-block (i.e., as small as a single thread) andmulti-block granularities, and to perform collective operations such assynchronization on threads in a cooperative group. Programming modelsupports clean composition across software boundaries, so that librariesand utility functions can synchronize safely within their local contextwithout having to make assumptions about convergence. In at least oneembodiment, Cooperative Groups primitives enable new patterns ofcooperative parallelism, including, without limitation,producer-consumer parallelism, opportunistic parallelism, and globalsynchronization across an entire grid of thread blocks.

In at least one embodiment, a dispatch unit 3706 is configured totransmit instructions to one or more of functional units and schedulerunit 3704 includes, without limitation, two dispatch units 3706 thatenable two different instructions from same warp to be dispatched duringeach clock cycle. In at least one embodiment, each scheduler unit 3704includes a single dispatch unit 3706 or additional dispatch units 3706.

In at least one embodiment, each SM 3700, in at least one embodiment,includes, without limitation, register file 3708 that provides a set ofregisters for functional units of SM 3700. In at least one embodiment,register file 3708 is divided between each of functional units such thateach functional unit is allocated a dedicated portion of register file3708. In at least one embodiment, register file 3708 is divided betweendifferent warps being executed by SM 3700 and register file 3708provides temporary storage for operands connected to data paths offunctional units. In at least one embodiment, each SM 3700 comprises,without limitation, a plurality of L processing cores 3710. In at leastone embodiment, SM 3700 includes, without limitation, a large number(e.g., 128 or more) of distinct processing cores 3710. In at least oneembodiment, each processing core 3710, in at least one embodiment,includes, without limitation, a fully-pipelined, single-precision,double-precision, and/or mixed precision processing unit that includes,without limitation, a floating point arithmetic logic unit and aninteger arithmetic logic unit. In at least one embodiment, floatingpoint arithmetic logic units implement IEEE 754-2008 standard forfloating point arithmetic. In at least one embodiment, processing cores3710 include, without limitation, 64 single-precision (32-bit) floatingpoint cores, 64 integer cores, 32 double-precision (64-bit) floatingpoint cores, and 8 tensor cores.

Tensor cores are configured to perform matrix operations in accordancewith at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, one or moretensor cores are included in processing cores 3710. In at least oneembodiment, tensor cores are configured to perform deep learning matrixarithmetic, such as convolution operations for neural network trainingand inferencing. In at least one embodiment, each tensor core operateson a 4×4 matrix and performs a matrix multiply and accumulate operationD=A×B+C, where A, B, C, and D are 4×4 matrices.

In at least one embodiment, matrix multiply inputs A and B are 16-bitfloating point matrices and accumulation matrices C and D are 16-bitfloating point or 32-bit floating point matrices. In at least oneembodiment, tensor cores operate on 16-bit floating point input datawith 32-bit floating point accumulation. In at least one embodiment,16-bit floating point multiply uses 64 operations and results in a fullprecision product that is then accumulated using 32-bit floating pointaddition with other intermediate products for a 4×4×4 matrix multiply.Tensor cores are used to perform much larger two-dimensional or higherdimensional matrix operations, built up from these smaller elements, inat least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, an API, such asCUDA 9 C++ API, exposes specialized matrix load, matrix multiply andaccumulate, and matrix store operations to efficiently use tensor coresfrom a CUDA-C++ program. In at least one embodiment, at CUDA level,warp-level interface assumes 16×16 size matrices spanning all 32 threadsof warp.

In at least one embodiment, each SM 3700 comprises, without limitation,M SFUs 3712 that perform special functions (e.g., attribute evaluation,reciprocal square root, and like). In at least one embodiment, SFUs 3712include, without limitation, a tree traversal unit configured totraverse a hierarchical tree data structure. In at least one embodiment,SFUs 3712 include, without limitation, a texture unit configured toperform texture map filtering operations. In at least one embodiment,texture units are configured to load texture maps (e.g., a 2D array oftexels) from memory and sample texture maps to produce sampled texturevalues for use in shader programs executed by SM 3700. In at least oneembodiment, texture maps are stored in shared memory/L1 cache 3718. Inat least one embodiment, texture units implement texture operations suchas filtering operations using mip-maps (e.g., texture maps of varyinglevels of detail), in accordance with at least one embodiment. In atleast one embodiment, each SM 3700 includes, without limitation, twotexture units.

Each SM 3700 comprises, without limitation, N LSUs 3714 that implementload and store operations between shared memory/L1 cache 3718 andregister file 3708, in at least one embodiment. Each SM 3700 includes,without limitation, interconnect network 3716 that connects each offunctional units to register file 3708 and LSU 3714 to register file3708 and shared memory/L1 cache 3718 in at least one embodiment. In atleast one embodiment, interconnect network 3716 is a crossbar that canbe configured to connect any of functional units to any of registers inregister file 3708 and connect LSUs 3714 to register file 3708 andmemory locations in shared memory/L1 cache 3718.

In at least one embodiment, shared memory/L1 cache 3718 is an array ofon-chip memory that allows for data storage and communication between SM3700 and primitive engine and between threads in SM 3700, in at leastone embodiment. In at least one embodiment, shared memory/L1 cache 3718comprises, without limitation, 128 KB of storage capacity and is in pathfrom SM 3700 to partition unit. In at least one embodiment, sharedmemory/L1 cache 3718, in at least one embodiment, is used to cache readsand writes. In at least one embodiment, one or more of shared memory/L1cache 3718, L2 cache, and memory are backing stores.

Combining data cache and shared memory functionality into a singlememory block provides improved performance for both types of memoryaccesses, in at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment,capacity is used or is usable as a cache by programs that do not useshared memory, such as if shared memory is configured to use half ofcapacity, texture and load/store operations can use remaining capacity.Integration within shared memory/L1 cache 3718 enables shared memory/L1cache 3718 to function as a high-throughput conduit for streaming datawhile simultaneously providing high-bandwidth and low-latency access tofrequently reused data, in accordance with at least one embodiment. Inat least one embodiment, when configured for general purpose parallelcomputation, a simpler configuration can be used compared with graphicsprocessing. In at least one embodiment, fixed function graphicsprocessing units are bypassed, creating a much simpler programmingmodel. In general purpose parallel computation configuration, workdistribution unit assigns and distributes blocks of threads directly toDPCs, in at least one embodiment. In at least one embodiment, threads ina block execute same program, using a unique thread ID in calculation toensure each thread generates unique results, using SM 3700 to executeprogram and perform calculations, shared memory/L1 cache 3718 tocommunicate between threads, and LSU 3714 to read and write globalmemory through shared memory/L1 cache 3718 and memory partition unit. Inat least one embodiment, when configured for general purpose parallelcomputation, SM 3700 writes commands that scheduler unit 3704 can use tolaunch new work on DPCs.

In at least one embodiment, PPU is included in or coupled to a desktopcomputer, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, servers, supercomputers,a smart-phone (e.g., a wireless, hand-held device), personal digitalassistant (“PDA”), a digital camera, a vehicle, a head mounted display,a hand-held electronic device, and more. In at least one embodiment, PPUis embodied on a single semiconductor substrate. In at least oneembodiment, PPU is included in a system-on-a-chip (“SoC”) along with oneor more other devices such as additional PPUs, memory, a reducedinstruction set computer (“RISC”) CPU, a memory management unit (“MMU”),a digital-to-analog converter (“DAC”), and like.

In at least one embodiment, PPU may be included on a graphics card thatincludes one or more memory devices. Graphics card may be configured tointerface with a PCIe slot on a motherboard of a desktop computer. In atleast one embodiment, PPU may be an integrated graphics processing unit(“iGPU”) included in chipset of motherboard.

Inference and/or training logic 915 are used to perform inferencingand/or training operations associated with one or more embodiments.Details regarding inference and/or training logic 915 are providedherein in conjunction with FIGS. 9A and/or 9B. In at least oneembodiment, deep learning application processor is used to train amachine learning model, such as a neural network, to predict or inferinformation provided to SM 3700. In at least one embodiment, SM 3700 isused to infer or predict information based on a trained machine learningmodel (e.g., neural network) that has been trained by another processoror system or by SM 3700. In at least one embodiment, SM 3700 may be usedto perform one or more neural network use cases described herein.

In at least one embodiment, a single semiconductor platform may refer toa sole unitary semiconductor-based integrated circuit or chip. In atleast one embodiment, multi-chip modules may be used with increasedconnectivity which simulate on-chip operation, and make substantialimprovements over utilizing a conventional central processing unit(“CPU”) and bus implementation. In at least one embodiment, variousmodules may also be situated separately or in various combinations ofsemiconductor platforms per desires of user.

In at least one embodiment, computer programs in form ofmachine-readable executable code or computer control logic algorithmsare stored in main memory 1504 and/or secondary storage. Computerprograms, if executed by one or more processors, enable system 1500 toperform various functions in accordance with at least one embodiment.Memory 1504, storage, and/or any other storage are possible examples ofcomputer-readable media. In at least one embodiment, secondary storagemay refer to any suitable storage device or system such as a hard diskdrive and/or a removable storage drive, representing a floppy diskdrive, a magnetic tape drive, a compact disk drive, digital versatiledisk (“DVD”) drive, recording device, universal serial bus (“USB”) flashmemory, etc. In at least one embodiment, architecture and/orfunctionality of various previous figures are implemented in context ofCPU 1502; parallel processing system 1512; an integrated circuit capableof at least a portion of capabilities of both CPU 1502; parallelprocessing system 1512; a chipset (e.g., a group of integrated circuitsdesigned to work and sold as a unit for performing related functions,etc.); and any suitable combination of integrated circuit(s).

In at least one embodiment, architecture and/or functionality of variousprevious figures are implemented in context of a general computersystem, a circuit board system, a game console system dedicated forentertainment purposes, an application-specific system, and more. In atleast one embodiment, computer system 1500 may take form of a desktopcomputer, a laptop computer, a tablet computer, servers, supercomputers,a smart-phone (e.g., a wireless, hand-held device), personal digitalassistant (“PDA”), a digital camera, a vehicle, a head mounted display,a hand-held electronic device, a mobile phone device, a television,workstation, game consoles, embedded system, and/or any other type oflogic.

In at least one embodiment, parallel processing system 1512 includes,without limitation, a plurality of parallel processing units (“PPUs”)1514 and associated memories 1516. In at least one embodiment, PPUs 1514are connected to a host processor or other peripheral devices via aninterconnect 1518 and a switch 1520 or multiplexer. In at least oneembodiment, parallel processing system 1512 distributes computationaltasks across PPUs 1514 which can be parallelizable—for example, as partof distribution of computational tasks across multiple graphicsprocessing unit (“GPU”) thread blocks. In at least one embodiment,memory is shared and accessible (e.g., for read and/or write access)across some or all of PPUs 1514, although such shared memory may incurperformance penalties relative to use of local memory and registersresident to a PPU 1514. In at least one embodiment, operation of PPUs1514 is synchronized through use of a command such as _syncthreads( )wherein all threads in a block (e.g., executed across multiple PPUs1514) to reach a certain point of execution of code before proc15ding.

Other variations are within spirit of present disclosure. Thus, whiledisclosed techniques are susceptible to various modifications andalternative constructions, certain illustrated embodiments thereof areshown in drawings and have been described above in detail. It should beunderstood, however, that there is no intention to limit disclosure tospecific form or forms disclosed, but on contrary, intention is to coverall modifications, alternative constructions, and equivalents fallingwithin spirit and scope of disclosure, as defined in appended claims.

Use of terms “a” and “an” and “the” and similar referents in context ofdescribing disclosed embodiments (especially in context of followingclaims) are to be construed to cover both singular and plural, unlessotherwise indicated herein or clearly contradicted by context, and notas a definition of a term. Terms “comprising,” “having,” “including,”and “containing” are to be construed as open-ended terms (meaning“including, but not limited to,”) unless otherwise noted. term“connected,” when unmodified and referring to physical connections, isto be construed as partly or wholly contained within, attached to, orjoined together, even if there is something intervening. Recitation ofranges of values herein are merely intended to serve as a shorthandmethod of referring individually to each separate value falling withinrange, unless otherwise indicated herein and each separate value isincorporated into specification as if it were individually recitedherein. Use of term “set” (e.g., “a set of items”) or “subset” unlessotherwise noted or contradicted by context, is to be construed as anonempty collection comprising one or more members. Further, unlessotherwise noted or contradicted by context, term “subset” of acorresponding set does not necessarily denote a proper subset ofcorresponding set, but subset and corresponding set may be equal.

Conjunctive language, such as phrases of form “at least one of A, B, andC,” or “at least one of A, B and C,” unless specifically statedotherwise or otherwise clearly contradicted by context, is otherwiseunderstood with context as used in general to present that an item,term, etc., may be either A or B or C, or any nonempty subset of set ofA and B and C. For instance, in illustrative example of a set havingthree members, conjunctive phrases “at least one of A, B, and C” and “atleast one of A, B and C” refer to any of following sets: {A}, {B}, {C},{A, B}, {A, C}, {B, C}, {A, B, C}. Thus, such conjunctive language isnot generally intended to imply that certain embodiments require atleast one of A, at least one of B and at least one of C each to bepresent. In addition, unless otherwise noted or contradicted by context,term “plurality” indicates a state of being plural (e.g., “a pluralityof items” indicates multiple items). Number of items in a plurality isat least two, but can be more when so indicated either explicitly or bycontext. Further, unless stated otherwise or otherwise clear fromcontext, phrase “based on” means “based at least in part on” and not“based solely on.”

Operations of processes described herein can be performed in anysuitable order unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearlycontradicted by context. In at least one embodiment, a process such asthose processes described herein (or variations and/or combinationsthereof) is performed under control of one or more computer systemsconfigured with executable instructions and is implemented as code(e.g., executable instructions, one or more computer programs or one ormore applications) executing collectively on one or more processors, byhardware or combinations thereof. In at least one embodiment, code isstored on a computer-readable storage medium, for example, in form of acomputer program comprising a plurality of instructions executable byone or more processors. In at least one embodiment, a computer-readablestorage medium is a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium thatexcludes transitory signals (e.g., a propagating transient electric orelectromagnetic transmission) but includes non-transitory data storagecircuitry (e.g., buffers, cache, and queues) within transceivers oftransitory signals. In at least one embodiment, code (e.g., executablecode or source code) is stored on a set of one or more non-transitorycomputer-readable storage media having stored thereon executableinstructions (or other memory to store executable instructions) that,when executed (i.e., as a result of being executed) by one or moreprocessors of a computer system, cause computer system to performoperations described herein. Set of non-transitory computer-readablestorage media, in at least one embodiment, comprises multiplenon-transitory computer-readable storage media and one or more ofindividual non-transitory storage media of multiple non-transitorycomputer-readable storage media lack all of code while multiplenon-transitory computer-readable storage media collectively store all ofcode. In at least one embodiment, executable instructions are executedsuch that different instructions are executed by differentprocessors—for example, a non-transitory computer-readable storagemedium store instructions and a main central processing unit (“CPU”)executes some of instructions while a graphics processing unit (“GPU”)executes other instructions. In at least one embodiment, differentcomponents of a computer system have separate processors and differentprocessors execute different subsets of instructions.

Accordingly, in at least one embodiment, computer systems are configuredto implement one or more services that singly or collectively performoperations of processes described herein and such computer systems areconfigured with applicable hardware and/or software that enableperformance of operations. Further, a computer system that implements atleast one embodiment of present disclosure is a single device and, inanother embodiment, is a distributed computer system comprising multipledevices that operate differently such that distributed computer systemperforms operations described herein and such that a single device doesnot perform all operations.

Use of any and all examples, or exemplary language (e.g., “such as”)provided herein, is intended merely to better illuminate embodiments ofdisclosure and does not pose a limitation on scope of disclosure unlessotherwise claimed. No language in specification should be construed asindicating any non-claimed element as essential to practice ofdisclosure.

All references, including publications, patent applications, andpatents, cited herein are hereby incorporated by reference to sameextent as if each reference were individually and specifically indicatedto be incorporated by reference and were set forth in its entiretyherein.

In description and claims, terms “coupled” and “connected,” along withtheir derivatives, may be used. It should be understood that these termsmay be not intended as synonyms for each other. Rather, in particularexamples, “connected” or “coupled” may be used to indicate that two ormore elements are in direct or indirect physical or electrical contactwith each other. “Coupled” may also mean that two or more elements arenot in direct contact with each other, but yet still co-operate orinteract with each other.

Unless specifically stated otherwise, it may be appreciated thatthroughout specification terms such as “processing,” “computing,”“calculating,” “determining,” or like, refer to action and/or processesof a computer or computing system, or similar electronic computingdevice, that manipulate and/or transform data represented as physical,such as electronic, quantities within computing system's registersand/or memories into other data similarly represented as physicalquantities within computing system's memories, registers or other suchinformation storage, transmission or display devices.

In a similar manner, term “processor” may refer to any device or portionof a device that processes electronic data from registers and/or memoryand transform that electronic data into other electronic data that maybe stored in registers and/or memory. As non-limiting examples,“processor” may be a CPU or a GPU. A “computing platform” may compriseone or more processors. As used herein, “software” processes mayinclude, for example, software and/or hardware entities that performwork over time, such as tasks, threads, and intelligent agents. Also,each process may refer to multiple processes, for carrying outinstructions in sequence or in parallel, continuously or intermittently.Terms “system” and “method” are used herein interchangeably insofar assystem may embody one or more methods and methods may be considered asystem.

In present document, references may be made to obtaining, acquiring,receiving, or inputting analog or digital data into a subsystem,computer system, or computer-implemented machine. Process of obtaining,acquiring, receiving, or inputting analog and digital data can beaccomplished in a variety of ways such as by receiving data as aparameter of a function call or a call to an application programminginterface. In some implementations, process of obtaining, acquiring,receiving, or inputting analog or digital data can be accomplished bytransferring data via a serial or parallel interface. In anotherimplementation, process of obtaining, acquiring, receiving, or inputtinganalog or digital data can be accomplished by transferring data via acomputer network from providing entity to acquiring entity. Referencesmay also be made to providing, outputting, transmitting, sending, orpresenting analog or digital data. In various examples, process ofproviding, outputting, transmitting, sending, or presenting analog ordigital data can be accomplished by transferring data as an input oroutput parameter of a function call, a parameter of an applicationprogramming interface or interprocess communication mechanism.

Although discussion above sets forth example implementations ofdescribed techniques, other architectures may be used to implementdescribed functionality, and are intended to be within scope of thisdisclosure. Furthermore, although specific distributions ofresponsibilities are defined above for purposes of discussion, variousfunctions and responsibilities might be distributed and divided indifferent ways, depending on circumstances.

Furthermore, although subject matter has been described in languagespecific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to beunderstood that subject matter claimed in appended claims is notnecessarily limited to specific features or acts described. Rather,specific features and acts are disclosed as exemplary forms ofimplementing the claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system, comprising: an articulated robot with amanipulator; one or more processors; and memory storing executableinstructions that, as a result of being executed by the one or moreprocessors, cause the system to at least: identify a real-world objectand a grasp pose with which to grasp the real-world object; obtain afirst image from a camera, the camera positioned to track an axis of themanipulator; move the manipulator to a real-world pre-grasp positionthat matches a simulated pre-grasp position determined based at least inpart on the grasp pose and an estimated pose of the real-world objectdetermined using the first image; provide a second image from the camerato a neural network to produce a value from a value function; and movethe manipulator based on the value to grasp the real-world object withthe manipulator.
 2. The system of claim 1, wherein the neural network istrained using a Q-value loss and a set of auxiliary losses generated bythe neural network.
 3. The system of claim 1, wherein the value is aQ-value.
 4. The system of claim 1, wherein the manipulator is a claw ormechanical hand.
 5. The system of claim 1, wherein: the articulatedrobot includes a wrist member; and the camera is attached to the wristmember of the articulated robot.
 6. The system of claim 1, wherein theexecutable instructions further cause the system to at least: determinea 6-d pose of the real-world object; determine a pre-grasp position forthe manipulator based at least in part on the 6-d pose of the real-worldobject; and move the manipulator to the pre-grasp position prior toobtaining the first image from the camera.
 7. The system of claim 6,wherein the executable instructions further cause the system to atleast: capture an image of the real-world object using a camera notmounted on the articulated robot; and determine the 6-d pose of thereal-world object using the image and a location of the camera not onthe articulated robot.
 8. A method, comprising: performing a grasp of areal-world object with a robot under control of one or more neuralnetworks, at least in part, by: identifying the real-world object and agrasp pose with which to grasp the real-world object; obtaining a firstimage from a camera that tracks an axis of a manipulator of the robot;moving the manipulator to a real-world pre-grasp position that matches asimulated pre-grasp position determined based at least in part on thegrasp pose and an estimated pose of the real-world object determinedusing the first image; providing a second image from the camera to aneural network to produce a value from a value function; and moving themanipulator based on the value to grasp the real-world object with themanipulator.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the grasp is performed atleast in part by: determining a 6-d pose of the real-world object; andgrasping the real-world object in accordance with a specific grasp pose.10. The method of claim 9, wherein the grasp is performed at least inpart by: determining the specific grasp pose for the real-world objectbased at least in part on the 6-d pose of the real-world object; andgrasping the real-world object in accordance with the specific grasppose.
 11. The method of claim 8, wherein the one or more neural networksare trained, at least in part, by: generating a simulation of asimulated robot attempting to grasp a simulated object with themanipulator; using the simulation to determine a result of aninteraction between the simulated robot and the simulated object;generating an image from a point of view of the manipulator; and usingthe image and the result of the interaction to train the one or moreneural networks.
 12. The method of claim 8, wherein an action for therobot is selected from a plurality of possible actions based at least inpart on a plurality of Q-values that correspond to the plurality ofpossible actions.
 13. The method of claim 8, wherein: the one or moreneural networks produce a set of auxiliary losses; the set of auxiliarylosses includes at least one of distance of the manipulator from thereal-world object, an indication of contact with the real-world object,and a force estimation of the manipulator; and the one or more neuralnetworks are trained, based at least in part, on the set of auxiliarylosses.
 14. The method of claim 11, wherein: the image is processed by afirst neural network to produce an embedding; and the embedding isprocessed using a second neural network to produce a Q-value associatedwith a proposed action.
 15. A processor, comprising one or morearithmetic logic units (ALUs) to direct a robot to grasp a real-worldobject by at least: using a neural network to generate an action from afirst image captured by an in-hand camera on the robot; moving the robotto a real-world pre-grasp position that matches a simulated pre-graspposition determined based at least in part on an estimated pose of thereal-world object determined using the first image; causing the robot tomove in accordance with the action; determining, based on a Q-valueproduced by the neural network using a second image from the in-handcamera, that the robot is properly positioned to grasp the real-worldobject; and causing the robot to grasp the real-world object.
 16. Theprocessor of claim 15, wherein the processor determines an action to betaken by the robot by at least: providing the first image and adistribution of possible actions to the neural network to generate a setof Q-values that correspond to the possible actions; and selecting theaction from the possible actions based on the set of Q-values.
 17. Theprocessor of claim 15, wherein the one or more arithmetic logic unitsfurther cause the robot to at least: determine a position and anorientation of the real-world object; and prior to capturing the firstimage, move a gripper to a pre-grasp position, the pre-grasp positiondetermined from the position and the orientation of the real-worldobject.
 18. The processor of claim 15, wherein the neural network istrained using a double-deep reinforcement learning algorithm.
 19. Theprocessor of claim 15, wherein: the in-hand camera is mounted to a wristelement of an articulated robot; and the in-hand camera is orientedsubstantially on a primary axis of a robotic gripper attached to thewrist element.
 20. The processor of claim 15, wherein the first image isdownsampled from a raw image acquired from the in-hand camera.
 21. Theprocessor of claim 16, wherein the action is a motion defined in a4-dimensional action space centered around a robotic gripper of therobot.
 22. The processor of claim 15, wherein: the robot includes amechanical hand having a plurality of digits.
 23. The processor of claim15, wherein: the robot includes a manipulator mounted to a vehicle; andthe manipulator is positioned at least in part by moving the vehicle.